Exodus
by mayrwyn
Summary: "I'm never going to live like that again," Carol hears herself say. The words are quiet, spoken softly because they are mostly to herself, but her voice doesn't shake and there's a certainty that comes with speaking them aloud that she isn't sure she'll feel ten minutes from now.
1. Chapter 1

Exodus

"I'm never going to live like that again," Carol hears herself say. The words are quiet, spoken softly because they are mostly to herself, but her voice doesn't shake and there's a certainty that comes with speaking them aloud that she isn't sure she'll feel ten minutes from now.

Beside her, Daryl stiffens. She almost doesn't notice.

"Excuse me?" Rick says. He seems taken aback after his little speech, the one that simultaneously took credit for their survival and blamed them all for Shane's death.

Every muscle in her body is tight and it's hard to control her breathing, but Carol takes a deep breath and looks him in the eye. "I got married the day I turned eighteen years old and have spent my life hearing that every one of someone else's sins were really about me. About taking care of me. That's bullshit. And I will not ever be in that position again, living a life of trying to stay in someone else's good graces."

"You'll die!" Rick stalks toward her, still angry, still intent on declaring himself Lord Grimes over them all.

"Probably," when she says it, she feels like she's floating. "I probably will. But if I do? It will be because of my own shortcomings, not yours. I escaped my daddy's will by trading it in for Ed's. I'm certainly not trading his in for yours. Everyone else can follow you if they want, but I'm finished following behind someone that tries to make me feel responsible for their actions. You probably really think you've done everything you've done for the good of the group. But the kindest despot is still a despot, and I am finished with that."

"Get out, then," Rick says. He moves into her personal space, leaning in, "you think you're better off on your own, then go."

She sees his eyes widen before she notices the reason why. Daryl is stepping between them, his hand landing on Rick's chest and pushing him away from her.

"Close enough." Daryl says. He doesn't even sound angry when he says it, and Daryl usually sounds angry even when he isn't. "You can say what you want to say from back there."

There is absolute silence.

"You think I'd hurt her? I'm tryin' to save her!" Rick shouts.

Daryl doesn't shout. He shakes his head as he meets Rick's eyes. "Know you won't. Ain't nobody or nothin' gonna."

The certainty of her own impending death falters. Just a moment ago, he'd been arguing with her, telling her that Rick had done alright by him. She didn't have any idea what could have possibly changed in the moments in between.

Whatever had been possessing her to allow her to speak to Rick that way was passing. She didn't want it to. She tries to cling to that feeling of freedom even as it fades away. Her voice shakes when she says, "Daryl?"

"Figure I ought to be lookin' for Merle," Daryl says, looking away from Rick and her gaze out of the corner of his eye. "Likely won't find him. Could use some company."

For some reason, Carol can't stop swallowing long enough to speak, so she just nods.

Everyone is talking at once and she can't make out a word of it. Daryl is nodding in Rick's direction and walking toward his bike. He looks back over his shoulder at her and she realizes she's still standing, staring, when she'd been the one to declare her intent to leave.

"You comin with me, or headin' your own way?" She nods again and he rolls his eyes at her. "Weren't no yes or no question. Had plenty to say a minute ago."

"I'll go with you," she says, and she half walks and half runs until she catches up with him.

She's climbing behind him on the bike when she hears him mutter under his breath, "Other way around, I reckon. Probably a dumbass idea, you know that?"

"I didn't ask you to go," she snaps, only to immediately regret it. What if he changes his mind? She isn't sure she can walk away alone, not now that she thinks she might survive after all. Daryl can teach her not to be a burden. They can be fine.

So quiet she almost doesn't hear it, he says, "You ain't the only one spent a whole life in some asshole's shadow. World's ended. Ever gonna try it another way, gotta be now."

The revving of the engine would cover any response she makes, so instead of speaking she puts her hands on his waist and just holds on.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Not more than five miles past the group, they came upon a gas station that had been abandoned long before the world fell apart. There were deep depressions where the tanks had been pulled and the holes refilled, and moss grew up the sides of the old concrete building, but there was a door and plywood had long since covered the windows. Daryl pulled the bike off the road and cut the engine.

"Here?" Carol sounded careful.

She sure as shit wasn't being careful ten minutes ago, but he wasn't thinking about that right now.

It was possible that, in the privacy of his own mind, Daryl was panicking more than a little. He'd talked big about not following some asshole, but he'd never done anything else and didn't really have any interest in being a leader, even of a group of two.

"You got a better idea?" He shook his head, then tried again. "Not like that sounded. I'm askin'."

She gaped at him for the briefest moment before visibly recalibrating her thoughts and sending a jerky nod in his direction. She spoke while she went back to scanning the surroundings. "It's dark. If we stay out here, we'll draw them with the engine and the light? If we can get in, it's good for the night? I think."

Daryl nodded, then handed her the knife from his belt sheath and pulled another one from his boot to keep for himself. "Watch out for me. You see one, tell me. One gets close, stick that in its eye. I'm gonna get through that door."

It took longer than he would have liked, and involved a lot more cursing than he'd anticipated, but in the end, he got the door open. He rode the bike all the way inside, then dug his flashlight out of a saddlebag and used it to have a look around. The floor was covered with debris, limbs, rotten leaves, and piles of beer cans and cigarette butts, probably left over from kids using it as a place to hide out and do all those things kids had to hide to do. Someone had gone as far as dragging a dilapidated old couch into the far corner, but there was no way of knowing what was likely living in there.

"Watch for snakes," he said. He handed Carol the light, then got the door closed behind him.

"Did you really have to say snakes?" She muttered. The flashlight beam was dancing around the floor like the snakes were gonna flank her while she wasn't lookin' or something.

"Yep. That light ain't gonna last long," he said as he started kicking debris toward the couch, trying to clean an area. "Best get a good long look around and make sure there ain't nothin' here we don't want to meet in the dark before we douse it."

He would say one thing for her, she didn't get squeamish on him. She didn't say a word about how dirty they were gonna get on what was left of the concrete floor. She didn't whine about the bugs, and only squeaked once when a rat in the corner startled her. She might have made a face when he killed it, but they had so little light he couldn't be sure. It was kinda nice, to just get a thing done without Lori's mouth running in the background. It didn't take them very long to have a corner reasonably free of debris and at least the larger creatures killed.

"No snakes," Carol said as she shifted and leaned back against the wall.

Daryl made a noise that was sort of agreement in the back of his throat. Then things got real quiet.

Usually, Daryl liked it quiet. He didn't like trying to make conversation when you didn't have any reason to talk. He never was good at it, and whatever he thought of to say was _wrong_ somehow more often than not. But the longer he sat in the quiet, the more he couldn't keep himself from openin' his mouth.

"Was more," he finally said, when the questions wouldn't let his mind settle down to sleep. He knew it, and he wanted to hear it. Maybe so he could be more sure that he hadn't just got them both killed by leaving with her instead of trying to talk her into staying with the group. "More than what you said. Could see it simmering in that head of yours. What was it?"

It was so dark that while he knew she'd settled somewhere on his right, he couldn't see her. He heard her sigh, though.

"He had Sophia in his hands, and instead of picking her up and running toward help, he left her there. He said there were two walkers. He couldn't outrun two walkers? Even if he led them back, the whole group was there. We could have killed two walkers. But he didn't want them anywhere near Lori and Carl. He thinks I don't know that was why, but I'm not stupid. People think I am because – well, that doesn't matter. I understand why he did it. That was his family. But I don't think I'll ever forgive him for it."

He knew she couldn't forgive him, either. He was the asshole that couldn't track her girl down, the one that kept telling Carol everything would be okay when it wasn't. He knew there was probably something he should say, but he couldn't think of what that would be, so he pretended he didn't know he should say something.

"That it?"

"Can we talk about something else?"

Yeah, that wasn't everything. But together with what she said to Rick, it was enough. He'd get it out of her another time, though, if it kept nagging at him. Not tonight. He said, "Whatever you want. Should go to sleep. "

"You changed your mind. One minute you were all 'Rick's a man of honor', and then you were leaving with me."

Daryl was suddenly very glad she couldn't see him any better than he could see her. He went very still, like moving even just a little would give her the power to see everything inside his head. That wasn't something he wanted to explain. It was probably the last thing he wanted to explain. He wasn't gonna lie to her. And he wasn't going to act like he was some hero type that just didn't want her to be on her own. That could lead to expectations that he was real damn sure he couldn't meet. Naw, if he was able to go that route, her little girl wouldn't'a come out of that barn.

The truth was every word she said could have been about him instead of her. He remembered them, word for word and every inflection. They'd bit into him, made his chest hurt and his breathing come hard and fast. They made him have to close his eyes and shake memories away. He'd escaped livin' under his daddy just to go livin' under Merle. Back in that clearing, she spoke and it suddenly felt like he was just trading following Merle for following Rick, and Rick wasn't even his brother. And the softly spoken sentence echoed in his mind, over and over again. _I'm never going live like that again._ Rick didn't understand it. Nobody else in that group, as far as he could tell, had any idea how hard won those words could be. Hershel, maybe, if what he'd implied about his daddy had been true. But the lady sitting across from him had said them, and she'd meant them, and she hadn't backed off even when Rick got in her face about it. It was damn near hypnotic, the way she stood there with her chin jutting out, not believing for a second she would survive long on her own, but still absolute in her refusal to submit.

He couldn't say any of those things, but there was one part that he could maybe say. And he ought to answer her question, since she'd answered his. He knew he'd been dithering about it too long when she spoke again.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"Ain't that. Lookin' for words is all," he said. "Way he leaned over you like that? He don't do that to Lori. Never did it with Shane, neither. Nor Andrea, or any of Hershel's folks. Wasn't reasoning with you, y'know? He was trying to loom over you, make you scared, work them buttons other people put there. Knew what he was doin', too. Weren't no accident like…" Like when he did it. When he ranted and said things to hurt her, to make her leave him alone. When he made her flinch, like she expected a smack. "Didn't mean to, when I did it. Real damn sorry about everything that happened that whole night."

"I understood."

"Too damn forgiving for your own good."

"I'm working on that."

A laugh caught him by surprise, escaping before he could catch it. "Work on it slow, 'cause I don't have the first damn clue what we're gonna do when the sun comes up. Forgivin' nature might come in real handy if you're expecting me to keep you safe."

He thought that was the end of the conversation, it was quiet for so long. And that was a good thing. Daryl didn't think he'd talked that much to another person ever in his whole life, and it was damn tiring is what it was.

"Daryl?"

Okay, not finished, then.

"What?"

"If something happens to me? It will be because of my own shortcomings, not yours," Carol whispered. They were the same words, but now they were soft and fond sounding. "We're in this together. I'm not much help now, but I can learn. And if something happens? That's not on you. You're a fine man, Daryl Dixon."

"Go to sleep." He said, gruffly. Woman needed to stop spouting shit like that.

Carol woke to find the door open. Daryl was standing just outside, smoking a cigarette.

She'd stiffened up during the night and standing was a battle. She let a groan when her back protested the harsh treatment, and Daryl spun on his heel. He dropped the cigarette and his knife came up before the empty nature of the room registered.

"Don't do that!"

Carol ducked her head. "Sorry. Not a morning person."

He was kicking the dirt around on the ground, muttering under his breath about not knowing where he threw the cigarette and it was nearly whole, when she stepped into the sun. It was warm, but nothing like the heat of summer. She usually loved this time of year. This year all she could think about was sleeping in abandoned gas stations in the cold of winter.

"You didn't sleep."

He shrugged. "Did, a little." He handed her a granola bar. "Got four more of those in the saddlebag, and that's it."

She grimaced, and slid the bar into her pocket. "I'm going to step around the side for a minute. Then we can talk about what to do next."

"Got your knife?"

It was technically his knife, but she still had it, so she showed it to him and nodded.

"Yell if you need me," Daryl said, making a point of looking in the other direction.

Carol tried to pretend she wasn't scared spitless the whole time she was out of his sight, but he seemed surprised at how quickly she returned so it was probably still obvious.

He ran a hand through his hair and said, "Bike's not too close to empty yet, but we need to find gas and find it now."

"Can it make it back to the highway?"

He frowned, then shrugged. "Probably. You're thinkin' cars there are a sure thing, and the bike can get through places the group couldn't go."

She nodded. "It's probably a stupid idea. It'll be crawling with walkers."

He shook his head, "Goin' there ain't staying there. Get gas. Scavenge a bit."

"Unless you think we'll come across something if we keep heading down this road?"

Daryl motioned her back toward the bike. "Sure thing's better than a maybe today. Let's get outta here."

If someone had asked Carol a year ago if she wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle, she would have laughed in their face. She would have been scared to death to so much as try. But today, with Daryl to handle the hard part, she had to work hard to keep herself from smiling. Smiling wasn't a clever idea on a bike, but she was behind him so she was pretty sure Daryl was still unaware of that particular mistake.

She should be terrified. They had no food, little gas, no place to stay for the night, and there were dead people everywhere trying to eat them. But despite all that, on the back of the bike with her hands on Daryl's waist and his body blocking most of the wind as they rolled onto the highway, Carol felt something that was so unfamiliar it took her a moment to identify it as joy.

As soon as she named it, it washed away on a wave of grief so sharp it took her breath. She had no right.

The last time she saw Sophia, she was lying on a stretch of highway with Lori's arms holding her down, watching as her little ran into the woods.

The bike shut off, and Daryl had turned to look at her. "Y'alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Really? Cause the way ya claws are diggin' into me says otherwise."

She let him go and moved to stand. "Sorry. I'll be fine. Just let my brain take a funny turn."

He shrugged at her as he got off the bike. "Happens. No problem." He grabbed a rolled of tubing out of the saddlebag and started toward a beat up old ford truck just ahead of them. "I'm getting gas. You look for anything else. Keep your head in the game. I'm serious. Walker could pop up anywhere, and ain't no one else here watchin'."

Chastised, she focused on the task at hand.

Later, they sat in the bed of a truck, splitting spam, crackers, and a can of peaches as sweat dripped off of them.

"Been thinkin'," Daryl said around a mouthful of crackers. "How long you figure it'd take for that herd to go through the animals?"

Carol shrugged. "I have no idea. That many? Not long."

"Once they ain't got no food, they'll just keep walking. It's what they do. Look for somethin' else to eat. Some'll likely get trapped, but the rest'll keep movin."

"How many are some, though?" Carol didn't like the direction this was taking. The idea of going back there felt terrifying. There were so many."

"Can't know without lookin'. Be quiet about it. The barn burned, but the house might not have caught. Even if it did, might could salvage something. Hell, even if it's just a tent and a couple blankets, be better than what we got. And if they've moved on? Got a whole cellar full o' food Hershel'd put by. Winter's comin'."

"Or we could go to look, and find ourselves back in that herd."

Daryl shrugged. "Might find ourselves in a herd, anyway. Head out that way, be careful and quiet about it. Come back here if there's nothin' there to find. What do you think? Got another idea?"

Carol could tell that he very much wanted her to have an idea, but she really didn't.

"We should check. You wanted to see if there was any sign of Andrea, anyway."

His eyes widened and he looked away from her. Carol smirked. She'd caught him, and it was kind of adorable how he couldn't look at her while he shrugged.

"Rick's probably right about that. Way the ground would be chewed up from all them dead fuckers, ain't likely to be no chance of trackin' her. Might be some sign, though. At least we could say we looked. Didn't just leave her behind without looking."

"Absolutely. We'll check." She sounded a lot more certain than she was, but he wasn't the only one who feel better if they checked.

Daryl was the one that came back for her. When she was left behind to die. She knew he respected and maybe even liked Rick, so she hadn't said it last night when asked about her unspoken reasons, but that was one of them. She didn't think for a second Rick would have turned around and went back into that herd of Walkers just because he heard her scream. She should feel guilty for taking the best man they had away from the group, but she just couldn't somehow.

She was too busy being grateful he'd come with her.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Damn." Daryl whispered, his voice gone breathy and his eyes wide. The only word that came to mind was devastation. The barn, of course, had completely burned to the ground. The burnt-out shell of Dale's RV was barely recognizable next to where the barn used to be. Most of the porch was gone from the front of the house, and from where they hovered near it looked like most of the ground floor windows were broken. Bits and pieces of camping gear were scattered across the ground.

Carol made a sound that was half agreement half gasp before pointing toward what was left of the chicken yard. "There. I can't tell if they got inside the house from here."

They were both whispering. They'd spotted maybe a half-dozen walkers, including the one Carol just pointed out. Daryl was already working on a plan to get rid of them from a distance. They could at least get some food. They weren't positioned right for him to tell if the manual pumps at the well had survived, but he had high hopes that they at least wouldn't be beyond fixing. That would make it worth the trip, even if they couldn't secure the house.

"What do you think?" Carol sounded uncertain, and he could practically hear her chewing on her bottom lip.

"Three bolts. Six Walkers. Don't want to fire a shot and draw more. Ain't got but a handful of ammo anyway." He shrugged. "Figure I'll start with the closest three. Then it's a race between retrieving the –"

"Absolutely not!"

He turned to look at her, irritated at being interrupted. And more than a little insulted she didn't think he could do it. "You got a better idea?"

"Better than you just hoping you can win that race? Give me a minute."

Daryl sighed. "Look, damn things track by sight, sound, and smell. All three. A good breeze picks up right now and they'll be coming this way. We talk much more? Same thing. I can take them out at a good distance, and they ain't too close to each other. It'll be fine."

"And I just sit here and watch and hope you make it?"

"Hell no. You keep your eyes on the direction I ain't lookin'. Can't afford to both look the same way right now. Shit. And we ain't got much daylight left."

He was really wanting some damned walls. And a fence. And a mote, maybe. Some sand traps, pits and a few other things he couldn't think of right now because he'd slept maybe two hours last night and his eyelids felt like sandpaper. He wasn't into playing leader, but there was nothing for it right now. She was gonna have to accept that they had to do this.

"We could go back to the highway. Find a car to sleep in. Come back in the morning, rested and maybe even get a better idea," she said.

"Yeah. Could do. Hand me one of them bottles of water we found. Gonna have a drink before we head back."

"There's no need to be an asshole."

Dammit. "I am what I am," he muttered. Now he felt like he'd kicked a puppy or something. Almost enough to go ahead and do what she said. Just almost. "Watch my back."

He took off at a jog, counting on her to give a shout if he was missing something no matter how mad she was going to be at him. And she was pissed, he could feel her glare on him the whole time.

But shit, it didn't take him as long to do it as it had taken them to argue about it.

He turned and was wiping down the last bolt when she stalked past him. She didn't so much look in his direction, but she was heading toward the water pump and had added a good ten yards to her trip so she could pass close enough to be sure he saw she wasn't looking at him.

That couldn't be good.

"Don't get bit by a snake!" It wasn't a shout, but it was close.

She stopped and turned to glare at him, and it was all he could do not to say 'made you look'.

"You're acting like a child," she said. And shit, the look that crossed her face after she said it. There he went, saying something _wrong_ again. This is why he didn't talk a lot. He just sucked at it so bad, is all.

He slunk past her and beat her to the pump. It wasn't the smoothest he'd ever used. He waved at her to come over, but she just stood there.

"Come on. Get a drink," he tried his best to sound like he they weren't fightin'.

She came a little closer and crossed her arms.

"That was stupid. And selfish. And horrible. I thought you were going to die."

Carol didn't curse. She said bullshit to Rick, and up until now it was the only profane word he'd ever heard her use. Carol was sweet and soft-talking and didn't used to think he was an asshole.

He shrugged at her, and gave the handle another pump. If she didn't want any, he sure did. He stuck his head directly in the stream of water and opened his mouth. He only choked a little. When he was finished, he nodded at her. "Didn't. We got to see if they's any inside the house. Losing daylight."

"You just ignored me like what I said didn't matter."

"What you want, huh? We talked about it. Weren't no other way to go, and couldn't just talk all day. And I damn well do listen to ya. We done talked about every single move we made."

She shook her head, cupped her hands under the spicket and waited. He obliged, and she seemed a little less pissed when she'd drunk her fill.

"Let's check the house. But those windows won't keep anything out."

Daryl pointed to the SUV that had been left behind when they ran. "Likely have to sleep in there tonight. But first we can clear the house, get somethin' to eat from the cellar. Blankets and pillows maybe."

"Just tell me what to do."

He mostly just had her follow him while he went from room to room, knife out, back to back. Every time he tried to think of how to teach her, he flashed on how his brother had taught him to swim. He'd been maybe four or five, and Merle had looked at him one scorching summer day while they were fishing and said, 'it's time you learned somethin'. Then he'd tossed Daryl into the water, yelling at him that if he wanted to live he'd swim the hell to the bank. Daryl remembered coming to, spitting up water and his chest on fire, only to have Merle tell him that boys what weren't pussies and who didn't lose their shit and start flailing around, would bob right up to the top on their own. Then he'd thrown him back in. Ten years later, he'd taught Daryl to fight in much the same way. Just replace the lake with a bar and water for a bunch of Merle's asshole friends, and that's Fighting 101, Merle-style.

It wasn't that Daryl hadn't learned how to swim, or how to fight, it was just that he didn't think that teaching method would work with Carol and Walkers.

But they'd got plenty done for the day. He started a fire in the fireplace, and they put some sweet potatoes from the cellar in the ashes and heated a kettle of water over the flames to use with the instant coffee Carol had found in the cabinet over the stove. It was old, and not the best in the world, but at least it wasn't decaf.

She was quiet the whole time, though, and Daryl didn't think it was his kind of quiet.

Damn.

"I ain't sorry for what I did," he said. "Had to clear it. But I maybe ain't as good at the cooperatin' thing as I ought to be. It could be I'm sorry for how I did it. Should've convinced you first." He meant it, mostly, but not nearly as much as he just wanted her to let it go.

"I should have been able to help you. Not just stand there while you risked your life for us. It can't be like that."

Well, if that was what was bubbling around in her head, it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd thought it was.

"Why? Doin' more today than yesterday. Do more tomorrow than today. You ain't learnin' fast enough, I'll tell ya. And it ain't like I know everything. Still getting used to all this shit, too, y'know." He shrugged, and changed topics. "It's done started getting real cool at night. We'll grab some pillows and blankets and get in that truck for the night."

"There are two of us," Carol said, sighing.

And there she went, off somewhere he didn't follow again. "Can count," he said. She raised her eyebrows at him and he rolled his eyes. "Mean, what about there bein' two of us."

"It means there's no one to break the tie. If we can't find a compromise, someone has to decide things. You were right about that. We can't just stand and argue forever."

Daryl sighed. "It's about fighting? You listen to me, 'cause you don't know what you're doin' yet. Everything else, I listen to you."

Her mouth dropped open, "Excuse me?"

He shrugged. "We ain't followin' assholes. Between the two of us? I'm the asshole. So we follow you. When they ain't no settlin' it. Or time to settle it. Whatever."

"You seem awfully okay with that. I don't know what I'm doing!"

"You do okay. Still alive. Not the best fighter, but you think better than most, I reckon. It don't work out, we try something else, right? That's the whole point." He finished off his coffee and said, "You grab them blankets, I'll put the fire out. Meet you at the front door in five minutes."

"And you aren't an asshole. You were just acting like one. For a minute," Carol insisted.

Daryl figured that 'asshole' was likely a fair enough assessment of him. But it got him out of making all the decisions. Except the ones about fighting.

He paused, turning to look after her as she walked up the stairs and it hit him square between the eyes. Almost everything was about fighting or being ready to fight or making sure you didn't have to fight these days. Damn.

The sun streaming through the window and landing directly on Carol's face was blinding, and the interior of the SUV was already stifling when she woke to the sound of a walker beating on the window above her head. She didn't scream, but the cut off sound of what wasn't a scream but only the result of being startled awake woke Daryl, who was sprawled in the rear with his crossbow on his chest like it was a security blanket.

Okay, fine. She screamed. At least he didn't mention it.

He'd slept like a baby, while she'd lain awake trying to come to grips with the fact that Daryl was apparently perfectly fine with her having the final say in what they were doing. Some of what they were doing. Anyway, it didn't seem right to her, since they were officially out here looking for Merle. Not that her companion seemed in any hurry.

Her companion who had been twisted around getting ready, she presumed, to go outside and kill the walker.

"Just one of 'em. You see any more?"

She'd been lost in her thoughts and not looking, but she looked now. "No. Just the one." If her voice sounded breathless it was because she'd been asleep. Not because she was absolutely terrified of the thing pressing its teeth against the barrier between them and scratching at the glass.

Oh, for pity's sake. She wasn't even going to try. She'd screamed. She was terrified. And neither of those things made one bit of difference in the world, so why should she bother to pretend?

"Okay. Get out the other side. I'm gonna grab this one by his shirt and hold 'em. Bring your knife. You're killin' yourself a dead guy. Start the day off right."

He sounded far too happy about the prospect.

Her heart was beating against her chest so hard and fast she was sure he had to hear it when she stepped around the rear of the vehicle.

"Gotcha knife?"

Of course she did. She put it up, in front of her, in an approximation of the way she'd seen him do it. "Yeah."

"Okay, here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna let him go."

"Just hold him still!"

"This about fightin?" he asked, smirking.

She was wrong last night. He really was an asshole.

"Okay. You're going to let him go and then?"

"Let him take a couple steps toward you. You want to keep away from his mouth all together, so come at him from kinda an angle if you can. This one ain't no taller than you, so he's a good one to start."

The thing he called a he was weaving and pulling and simultaneously trying to get out of Daryl's hold and turn to his head enough to get his teeth into man holding him. Carol didn't see anything for her companion to feel so smug about, but smug was exactly how he sounded.

"Okay," she said. She wasn't ready for this. "I'm ready."

She let him come within a few feet, and then the waiting was too much and she stepped forward, aiming for its eye. The knife glanced off its cheekbone and her momentum kept her moving forward. Her other hand was pushing against it, trying to keep it away from her, and she felt one of its hands grasping at the top of her left arm.

Whether it was adrenaline or sheer unadulterated panic, the next thing she was aware of was the knife sinking hilt-deep into its eye and then she was falling backward. For the briefest of moments, it was on top of her, but Daryl had lifted it up and tossed it to the side so fast she didn't even have time to scream again. She lay there, gasping for air and covered in bits of it's flesh.

"You scratched?"

Now Daryl was the one who sounded almost scared.

"No. No, I'm fine."

He reached for her hand and pulled, helping her to her feet. She could have sworn his hands were shaking, just a little, but he let go so quickly she couldn't say she was completely sure. She was certain, though, that the full-blown smile on his face was the first one she had ever seen him wear. "Damn right you are. Swam the first try. Didn't sink nary time." He slapped her on the back a little harder than she expected, and it startled a squeak out of her that turned into a laugh.

She didn't have the first clue what swimming had to do with anything, but as Carol stared at the body, for just a moment it represented the entire world being out to kill her, and something warm spread through her chest.

She did that. He didn't kill it for her. She didn't stand behind anyone.

She defended herself.

One side of Daryl's mouth was still tilted ever so slightly up, like he was trying to hide that he had ever smiled at all but couldn't keep it completely in. He said, "Now let's get to that pump and rinse all this shit off. Then we can worry about breakfast and decide what to do today."

"I was thinking we could take down the interior doors and use them to cover the windows. I think there's enough if you count the closets. If we can find some nails and a hammer, anyway."

Daryl nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

And it did. It sounded like a good plan that a not-stupid woman might come up with, after she killed the thing that tried to kill her. She looked at Daryl out of the corner of her eye, and could swear that he looked proud.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Thank's so much for the reviews. Hope you guys continue to enjoy it.

Chapter 4

Carol stared out the passenger window of the SUV as they made their way slowly down the main street of the small town nearest the Greene Farm. Or maybe it was their farm, now? A month after they returned and began fortifying the house it was beginning to feel more and more like it was their place, something the two of them were building together. It was where – no. She wasn't thinking of that right now.

She still hadn't been to _that particular corner_ of the property. No matter where she was it seemed she could feel it pulling on her. The place where Sophia's body rested was possessed of an almost supernatural ability to be visible only out of the corner of her eye, but from every imaginable angle. Every now and then, she would catch Daryl staring at her and realize he'd been watching her watch that spot. They would both look away and pretend it hadn't happened.

"You ready?" Daryl said, startling her out of her thoughts.

Carol took a deep breath and forced a smile in his direction. "I can do this."

"We can do this. We're goin' in the five and dime. Grab what we can and back out. That goes good, and we might try the grocery."

"That'll be picked over, surely."

"Ain't about that. Whatever we get is a bonus. This is about practice, right?"

"Right. Absolutely."

There must have been something in her voice because he was staring at her, eyes narrowed and lips pressed together. "Whatcha thinkin'?"

She wasn't really thinking anything. "That this thing uses a lot of gas, and practice or not if we don't fill it up we've wasted a lot."

He nodded. "Then let's not waste it. No talkin' after we open the doors."

The front of the store went well. Light filtered in through the dirty front windows, and they killed two Walkers as they mad their way through the clothing racks. But as they moved away from the windows, it got darker, and the shelving didn't seem to be laid out in any kind of logical pattern. Carol had just sighed in relief, noting the location of half an aisle full of feminine hygiene products, when something brushed against her knee.

She kicked out, hard, before she even knew what it was.

It was a little girl. Seven or eight years old, wearing a Disney princess dress and one slipper, the other foot bare.

Carol froze. She didn't move, she didn't speak, she couldn't even breathe.

Daryl was a statue behind her, maybe waiting for her to finish it off. She tried to turn her head to say she couldn't, but hadn't managed before an arrow flew past her right ear and lodged itself in the little girl's – the walker's - eye.

Shit.

"Sorry," she whispered. Her right fist was rubbing almost frantic circles over her heart. He moved in front her and caught her eye, putting his finger to his lips, and nodded.

She couldn't have described the look on his face to save her life, but none of the anger she expected was there. He tilted his head and stared at her a moment, then nodded and signaled that they were going to continue. Carol took a deep breath. The smell turned her stomach for a moment, but she nodded and continued. One foot in front the other. Focus. Don't get distracted by the body, or the smell, or the memories trying to rise up and block out everything else.

Daryl killed two more, and she took out one with no problems. It was almost a relief. It felt like a confirmation that it was only the fact that it was a child that had caused her to freeze. She would do better next time. They cleared the rest without incident and then set about collecting things. Carol grabbed a cart first thing. There was too much here for the bag old canvas bag that she'd found in Hershel's attic. She was almost giddy as she hit the pads and tampons first, then filled the rest with coffee, cocoa, and chocolate. She met Daryl at the front of the store near door, and they smirked at one another's choices. He had Band-Aids, socks, and a pile of camouflage and plaid flannel that was likely enough clothes for the two of them for the rest of their lives. She spotted nails and a new hammer, screws, and rubber tubing. Scattered around him on the floor were half a dozen gas cans.

They loaded it all in the back of the SUV, then headed for the grocery.

Carol thought the smell alone might kill them, and had little hope of finding much salvageable in the way of food. It was an old-fashioned mom and pop store, the kind of place that only existed in places so small the big chains hadn't bothered with them yet. When they opened the door, the jingling of the bell nearly made Daryl jump out of this skin, and Carol smirked, happy that it hadn't been her this time.

Some days, she resented the very competence she'd been depending on in Daryl. They spent mornings hunting (he hunted, she scared of game while she tried to learn) and training (he tried to teach her how to fight and she fought against her instinct to roll up in a ball or flinch away). Afternoons were spent working harder than she'd ever worked in her life, securing the house, cleaning up the dead walkers outside, and gathering and chopping wood. Evenings were spent in front of the fire, sipping bad instant coffee before she slept and he kept watch from the roof. Halfway through the night, they would change places and come morning they would start all over again.

Now, a month into their new life, she was good enough for this run, but she still felt like a giant incompetent bruise. She had learned that saying that out loud wasn't something Daryl would put up with.

He believed in her in a way she'd never quite been able to believe in herself. When she thought about it, she thought they might be friends.

And because they were friends, she waggled her eyebrows at him and grinned when a little bell made him jump three feet in the air. He rolled his eyes, but couldn't hide the flush of pink that was creeping up the back of his neck.

The store was empty, and had already been gone over. Most of the canned food was gone, but they found a bit of pasta and some rice. They hit the jackpot in the baking aisle, though. Pound after pound of flour, corn meal, sugar, and enough Crisco to sink a battleship. There was baking powder and baking soda and powdered milk. Things that when they were gone, there wouldn't be any more, at least not for a long time. She and Daryl just stared at each other, gaping, and then she ran to the front for another buggy. While she was there, she grabbed all the bags from the check-out, to make moving their haul inside a bit easier when they got back. She cursed herself for not thinking of that in the five and dime, but she was new at this.

Outside, she stood guard over Daryl as he loaded it all in the SUV. He rummaged around until he came up with a siphoning hose and one of the gas cans, then gestured to the cars still lining the street.

It didn't take long to discover that most of the vehicles had already been emptied. It may even have been by their group, she didn't know how much gas Glenn and Maggie had brought back from town. Still, they got about ten gallons before she let out a low whistle.

She'd been keeping an eye on the sky for a while, and had noticed Daryl casting it a leery glance every now and then. Now, she pointed out the mass of near black clouds moving quickly toward them, and Daryl nodded. He scraped the cover of the gas tank with a knife as he stood up, marking it for when he came back as one he'd already emptied, and they made their way back to their transportation.

Inside, she let out a sigh of relief and whispered.

"I have never wanted to talk more in my entire life."

"Did good, though." Daryl responded. "The hell you need that many tampons for?"

It startled a laugh out of her. "That's a rule, Daryl. You follow it from now on. Always take all the pads and tampons. Stuff them in your pockets. Keep them in your bag. We might have to leave in a hurry, and I'll need them eventually."

He scoffed. "Take up a lot of damned space."

"Says the man who grabbed enough flannel to clothe a colony."

He glared, "Winter ain't nothin' to be scoffin' at. Wind might blow straight through that house, no way of knowing yet."

Daryl was obsessed with winter in a way that broke Carol's heart a little. She'd even heard him mention it once to Merle all the way back in the quarry camp, that they needed to start 'puttin' something by' for winter. His brother had clapped him on the back and told him to stop frettin', but she remembered it now as she watched him chop more wood than she could imagine them ever needing. And then chopping more wood.

"Shit." Daryl's said as the world around them darkened. He accelerated. "We ain't gonna beat it."

He'd barely finished the sentence when the sky opened up. In moments, Carol couldn't see where the road was, much less if they were still on it. They came to a stop, her companion muttering a string of profanity under his breath that would have made a sailor blush.

"It's okay. Kill the engine. We'll just sit here until it passes."

He made a humming sound in the back of his throat while his hands drummed out a distracted pattern on the steering wheel. "Don't like bein' gone this long as it is. Now this? Some damn body's liable to see the house as a good shelter and be in it when we get back.

"We haven't seen any other people since we left the group," Carol whispered.

"They're out there. Not seein' 'em yet just means it's about time."

"And if they are, we'll either negotiate or we'll leave."

"Or get our asses killed."

Carol winced. "Whatever's going to happen, there's nothing we can do now that will change anything. Well, we could try to drive in this and end up losing sight of the road and ramming into a tree, then we'd both be walkers and it wouldn't matter anyway."

He glared at her. "Don't say shit like that. You ain't gonna be no walker. And you damn well better make sure I ain't, either. I buy it? You put me down."

"Can we not talk about that?"

"You brought it the hell up."

"Okay! Okay, look. You're nervous." She had no idea why he would be, when he'd been joking and seeming proud of her just a minute before. "Let's kill some time. Hey! There's nothing else we should be doing. There's nothing else we _can_ be doing. How often does that happen? This is – it's like a mini-vacation. Let's play three questions."

"The hell's that?"

"We take turns. You three questions, that we both have to answer. Then I ask three questions. The game lasts until we each make up three questions. First one to refuse to answer a question loses."

"That ain't no game. You just now made that shit up. Who the hell plays a stupid game like that?"

She smirked. "Is that your first question?"

"That yours?"

They just stared at each other for a second, then Daryl looked determinedly out the window and said, "Fine. First question."

"Remember. You have to be willing to answer any question you ask."

He nodded, but didn't look back her way. "How long you married to him?"

Carol blinked. That wasn't the question she was expecting. "You can't answer that one."

"Sure I can. Ain't never been married to nobody. 's close enough. Go on then, or you done playin' already?"

"Twenty six years." She got the distinct impression he was doing math in his head and remembered that she'd talked about getting married the day she turned eighteen. "And it's impolite to ask a lady her age, no matter how sneaky you think you're being."

He barked a laugh. "Ain't that. Just…why you stay? I'll go first on that one. Stayed with the old man 'cause I was too chickenshit to run away. Merle said he'd be back for me, and I had to be sure he could find me. Stayed with Merle…I guess 'cause he was Merle. Y'all, all y'all in that group? You don't know him, not really. When he ain't high? He's still an asshole, but he's…he ain't what everybody thinks he is. Not really. Or at least, not all the time. So, why you stay?"

"Because I wasn't on any of the bank accounts. I wasn't on the deed or the mortgage. I wasn't on the car registration or any of the bills. I had a high school education and no idea how to even apply for a job. I was just so convinced that I couldn't take care of Sophia without him, that the court would give him custody, and I couldn't leave her alone with him. Before all this? I was absolutely certain that no one would believe me. In public Ed was this charming man, not rich but pretty successful. He had his own business, was in the chamber of commerce, had all these connections to people who _were_ well off. Judges. Lawyers. It wasn't until he didn't have a house to hide it in that anyone else ever suspected he was anything but a good man with a crazy wife."

She couldn't keep her voice from breaking at the end, but she rolled her eyes at him and pretended that she had. She braced herself for his next question. Although this was her idea, the inside of the Tahoe suddenly felt much smaller than it had before.

"Second question," he paused, and looked into her eyes for a long time. She wondered what it was he saw there, if it was obvious that she found impossible to look away. Finally, he said, "I get us some squirrel, you know how to make dumplin's?"

She beamed. "Better than you have ever had before."

All in all, sitting in an SUV in the middle of the road during a storm wasn't the worst way she'd ever spent a couple of hours.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

They started moving again when the rain slowed, but as they covered the short distance back to the house it turned to sleet, and then to hail. Daryl sucked a breath between his teeth and tightened his grip on the steering wheel but didn't make any further comments.

Winter had arrived.

It's not that winters this far south in Georgia were particularly harsh, they weren't. During the day, most of the time a long-sleeved shirt and maybe a jacket was plenty warm enough. But it was a different story after the sun went down, with the temperature often falling enough that a man who was sleeping rough could freeze to death in the night.

Winter was about more than bein' cold, though. The whole time they were carrying supplies into the house, Daryl was counting things. Firewood was still too low. He didn't have a clue how to fix the generator, and that's what powered the well pump and would've given them water inside the house. They were still carrying water from the outside pump into the house in buckets, and he didn't know what they'd do if that froze up. They had a few crates of the bottled stuff, but they needed to find containers to fill and keep inside just in case. They'd not fixed themselves an outhouse yet, they were just carrying water into the house in buckets and using it to flush the toilets. That wasn't a long-term plan.

He didn't know anything about plumbing. Merle did, but Merle wasn't here. Hell, if Merle were here the generator woulda likely been fixed the first day.

By the time they'd stacked their haul in what had been Herschel's dining room, they were both soaked to the bone and the sound of hail hitting the windows was making him jumpy. The downstairs windows had mostly been broken out before they'd boarded them up, so that was the upstairs windows taking that beating. Walkers didn't have any way of getting up there, but if they lost those there wouldn't be any keeping the inside of the house warm.

Damn it.

"Daryl?"

"We still got a couple weeks before it really hits," he said, answering the question he was sure she was about to ask. "We're fine."

She gave him her half smile, nodding, "We're better than fine. I'm going to build the fire. We'll dry off a bit, warm up, and then we'll poke around in this haul and decide what would be nice for supper."

Her head was tilted, and she was looking at him like she had a whole bunch of questions that she just wasn't asking. Maybe she hadn't been about to tell him how woefully unprepared for the cold part of the year they were, after all. Sometimes he forgot that she likely got all her food from the grocery store for the whole of her life. That she just pushed a few buttons on her wall and the house she was in was warm.

The first time Merle went to juvie it had been winter. Daryl remembered piling all their clothes on top of himself and curling into a ball, wishing for the warmth of his big brother at his back, shivering. He remembered being so distracted by the cramping of his stomach and the fuzzy, dizzy feeling of going too long without anything to eat that he didn't hear the old man coming.

Winter made you weak if you weren't ready for it.

He shook his head and said, "Sounds good," because she looked like she was waiting for him to answer.

An hour later, they were arranged in their nest of mattresses and blankets, staring at each other over bowls of kraft mac & cheese.

"I thought it would be bad without butter and milk."

He shrugged. "Never tried it that way. Always just added the water." It felt like the most idiotic conversation he ever had.

Carol sighed. "Are you going to tell me what I did, or are you going to make me guess?"

"The hell you talkin' about?"

"Somewhere between playing three questions and getting the supplies inside, you got mad at me."

"Ain't mad at nobody!"

She rolled her eyes and said, "Because you're acting like nothing's wrong."

Well, shit. "Ain't everything about you. Just thinkin' is all. Not mad."

"Fine," Carol said.

Her voice was clipped, and now he really was starting to get mad.

"You mad at me, now? 'Cause I said I ain't mad?"

She sighed, and turned back to her dinner. After a while, she said, "I'm sorry. You're right, it isn't all about me. Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

"No," he said. It came out a little harsher than he meant for it to.

Now she was staring at him again. He didn't like being stared at.

He wanted the comfortable feeling they'd had on the run back. He knew better than to think that was happening any time soon. He stood up, then picked up his bow. "I'm goin' on watch. Get some sleep."

The window they usually climbed out of to get to the roof was cracked, and outside balls of ice half the size of his palm were scattered around. He could see the cracks in the windshield of the SUV from where he was, and he bit out a curse.

Walker could push its way through that easy, now. That meant if they did any more runs they would have to be small and short, getting only what would fit in a bag and could be carried on the bike.

He worried at the problem until it was time to wake Carol and switch out watch.

When he got back downstairs, though, he had a hard time walking across the room and waking her. She was snoring softly, which she usually didn't do. Her face was red and her eyes were puffy lookin'. Daryl figured he knew too much about what she looked like when she'd been cryin', and he sure as hell was the cause of it more than he should be.

He woke her without looking at her, mumbled a good night under his breath, and tried to make his head quiet down enough to go to sleep.

What felt like a heartbeat later, Daryl hovered in the space between sleep and waking, enjoying the warmth of the blankets and the smells of breakfast filling the room. It was a strange feeling, but not an unpleasant one. He knew that any minute now his brain would catch up to his body and he would be on his feet and decided what needed doing first, but that all seemed very far away.

He could hear Carol shuffling around in front of the fireplace, humming an unfamiliar tune under her breath.

"Coffee's ready when you are," she said softly. He wondered how long she'd known he was awake.

He tried to say he was going to lay here another few minutes. It came out as something between a moan and a grumble.

Carol laughed at him, soft and silky sounding, and he started to feel that strange contented feeling melting away.

He cursed when it escaped him, only to be replaced by the too familiar headachy feeling of getting half enough sleep.

Carol shook her head at him, "How are you this morning?"

"Need coffee," he answered, pushing himself to his feet and stumbling toward her. It was about then that the memory from yesterday hit him. Carol didn't look upset. In fact, she looked exactly as she usually did in the morning, fresh and new and ready to start over. He suspected that some mornings it was more of an act than others, but he was still piecing together that theory.

Could be she was actually one of them morning people folks talked about. Daryl always figured they were a myth. Nobody woke up that happy.

"You feeling better?" Carol asked the question softly, keeping her attention on what was quickly becoming their breakfast.

Daryl sighed. "Gotta be. Figure I'll take another look at that generator today, but not for long. If I ain't managed to fix it yet, I ain't gonna waste another day tinkerin' with the damned thing. Give it a look and go from there. Winter stuff was likely in the barn, but there might be some bubble wrap and tape up in the attic or somethin'. Find that, we can get started wrapping the insides of the windows. You want to have a look around for that while I give that machine one more try?"

She smiled at him, and handed him his morning cup of coffee.

Carol rationed everything, but she still gave them each two cups of coffee a day like they weren't using the last of it in the world. She said that it wouldn't keep forever, anyway, and that they ought to enjoy some things as long as they could.

Daryl didn't look forward to running out of coffee any more than he looked forward to running out of cigarettes. But he'd already decided he wasn't letting himself think about those things today.

"So last night was about winter," Carol said.

She very carefully made it a statement, but he felt the question simmering underneath.

He shrugged. "Don't like winter. 'specially since we couldn't hunt enough in the fall, cause we ain't got a system worked out for storing meat. Winter ain't nothing but cold and wind and assholes with cabin fever." He hadn't meant to add that last part, but he didn't draw attention to it by taking it back.

People got messed up in the living room instead of somewhere else more often in the winter. They didn't go to bars to drink, or find hookers for other purposes, and they sure didn't go out and find strangers to get into fight with. The woods were empty and cold, the house was dangerous, and Daryl _hated_ winter.

Carol sipped her coffee. "We'll insulate around the broken windows as much as we can, and there are a lot more blankets in the house than we're using. We have enough food, even if a lot of it seems to be canned beets and pickles. We really are going to be fine, as long as we don't end up having to run. And there's no way of predicting that, so all we can do is be as prepared as we can. And learn to love beets."

"Herschel liked beets," Daryl muttered, shooting her a look that made his disagreement obvious.

He liked the expression she made when she was amused but thought that it would be mean to laugh. It felt a lot like she'd forgiven him last night's mood.

"I shouldn't have pushed," she said. "You told me it wasn't about me."

"We gonna talk this to death? I ain't mad. Never was. You?"

She sighed. "Of course not. I didn't have any reason to get angry. I wasn't angry last night."

The emphasis she put on angry told him enough. "You cried."

She blinked at him, then looked away. "Not everything is about you. Drop it."

Oh.

Well, shit. And the morning had been going so well.

He jerked a nod in her direction and finished off his coffee. It was time to get to work was all. He wasn't running from her like the hounds of hell were after him or anything.

He didn't avoid her all day, either, they just each had their own tasks to see too. They'd not found a single sheet of plastic they could use around the windows, so Daryl spent the entire day chopping wood and killing Walkers.

He killed six, and it bothered him. They hadn't seen that many close to the house since they'd first cleared the place. The house itself was secure for anything short of another huge herd of the things, but he really wished he'd managed to get his hands on at least some barbed wire fencing and got that up.

He didn't let himself think about how much more they could have gotten done with a dozen people than they got done with two. Hell, if they'd had a dozen people they wouldn't have had near enough food.

Trade-off, he figured.

And obsessing over details like that weren't doing a damned a thing to make him feel any better.

Dinner was canned beans, potatoes that had been wrapped in foil and shoved into the ashes of the fire, and johnny cakes. The fried corn bread was still warm when Carol handed him his plate, and he caught himself gawking at her.

"This is too much."

"I'm in charge of keeping up with what we have. We have plenty. Eat."

Damn, it was good. "You got a real gift," he said around a mouthful of food.

She rolled her eyes at him. "I heat up food."

"Naw. I mean it. Eatin' better than – ," he stopped, then thought _the hell with it_ and admitted, "better than I ever have. Gonna get fat, you keep it up."

Patches of red started at the bottom of her neck and worked their way up to her cheeks.

"So," Carol said, "want to play three questions?"

Hell no, he didn't want to do that. But he did want that feeling back, the comfortable feeling he'd had before he let the inside of his head make everything weird, so he said, "You go first this time," and set about getting himself comfortable.


	6. Chapter 6

Note: Guys, I wanted to take a moment and say thank you for all the awesome reviews. I'm glad that there are people who seem to be enjoying this story, and I hope you stick with me, because it's a long, slow ride. I can't figure out how to respond to reviews on the site, so here's a shout out to all of the lovely, wonderful people who have kept the juices flowing. Now on the good bits.

The realization that she'd had nothing at all to do with the change she saw come over Daryl was something of an epiphany. Carol had been conditioned pretty much her whole life to take responsibility for the changeable moods of others. When Ed was tired, it was because she didn't let him get enough sleep. When he was hungover it was because she drove him to drink. When he hit her, it was because of something she did. When he yelled at Sophia it was because Carol was a bad mother. When there wasn't enough money she had wasted her allowance. She knew, in an academic sort of way, that none of it was true. But even after standing up to Rick and declaring that she would never live like that again, when Daryl went quiet she immediately started looking for what she may have done to cause it.

His declaration that not everything was about her hit hard. She didn't think he even knew that he had done it, but it felt like someone had pushed her into a pool of ice water.

And it had been almost easy between them up until now, each of them recognizing enough in the other to walk softly around certain edges and to ignore it when thoughts occasionally turned in odd directions. The days following their misunderstanding were spent trying to get their balance back as they continued to work on the house. She wasn't sure why Daryl was still so quiet, but she knew that she was often lost in her own thoughts. Often, those thoughts centered around trying to understand what had been so different about this misunderstanding, when there were exchanges in their past that were much more hurtful. Possibly, Carol decided, it was because they had grown used to understanding one another, and the reminder that there were still so many landmines around them made them both overly wary of stepping on another one.

Their nightly questions were all about silly things, meant to try to make each other laugh.

Everything felt careful and distant and Carol didn't like it.

She didn't know how to fix it, either. And so things remained for a time, each of them tiptoeing around the other, unable to find a way out of the trap they'd made for themselves.

She was out checking the snares nearly a week later, Daryl a shadow behind her, when things finally shifted again.

"That's damn nice," he said, clearing his throat.

Carol shifted so she could look over her shoulder to answer him, and noticed a patch of red spreading around the base of his neck. She didn't realize what she was seeing at first. He was scanning the area like he'd heard a Walker creeping up on them, or like he didn't want to look her in the eye, and before she caught herself she said, "The snare, or my ass?"

He turned on his heel, eyes wide and shocked looking, and the red patch spread all the way to the tips of his ears. "The hell?"

"Which one is damn nice?"

"I ain't lookin' at your ass!"

He was breathing a little too fast, staring at her like he didn't know if she was about to hit him or laugh at him. There was a line between fun teasing and genuine distress, and Carol could see it glowing bright in front of her with giant flashing neon arrows pointing at it from all sides. She sighed, "I'm just teasing. I didn't think you were."

He opened his mouth, closed it again, then looked away for a second before turning back to her. "First with the questions, now it's gonna be comments?"

"That does appear to be the case. But to be fair, it'll probably only be one or the other." She winked at him. His rolled his eyes at her, his breathing returning to normal as they backed away from the subject.

"Don't believe you," he muttered, but the edges of his mouth were twitching like he wanted to smile but thought he was too much of a tough guy to do any such thing.

The whole incident was interesting, and Carol resigned herself to turning that reaction over and over in her mind as the day wore on. They gathered up the two skinny rabbits that had been caught and reset the rest of the snares, then they spread a tarp out on the ground and Daryl went to work with his ax. They worked together, him cutting smaller limbs from trees and her gathering and placing smaller pieces of wood to stack on top of the tarp, and things just settled. It was almost as if the silly little exchange had been the one that was finally enough to bring them back to where they'd been before, and Carol replayed it like a little movie in her mind.

She was so caught up in trying to figure out why it had been that particular exchange that did the trick, just in case she needed the information later, that it took her longer than was probably suitable to realize that he'd already been blushing when she made the joke. And there was only one explanation for that, no matter how many angles she tried to view the incident from.

 _He had been staring at her ass while she set the snare._

The very idea was shocking. It felt foreign and vaguely ridiculous, and there was no way that she wasn't mistaken.

She knew that Daryl had more or less raised himself, with occasional input from Merle. And the whole group had been witness to Merle's idea of charm. She imagined that Daryl, if he were really interested in a woman, would express it much the way his older brother did. That kind of thing was learned, after all.

Dragging a tarp covered with limbs from the edge of the forest to the spot in front of the house where Daryl chopped firewood wasn't a fun or pleasant task, but it did afford her the opportunity to think. And those are the things she thought about. The work itself was routine, now. She took up her corner of the heavy plastic without a word, nodding at him when Daryl took up his side. Talking wasn't an option, as it would take more air than she felt like existed in the world, and considering what interest from Daryl Dixon may or may not look like distracted her just a bit from the burning in her chest. And her arms. And her thighs. And hell, maybe by now she did have a nice ass. All this physical work had to be good for something.

She was still obsessing over things that didn't really mean anything when they made it the house. Carol rested her hands on her knees, leaning forward and taking huge gulps of air. "I swear that does not get easier."

"Only took us fifteen minutes. Took an hour the first time," he said, lips twitching.

She straightened and crossed her arms, forcing words out between too loud breaths. "You think this is funny, don't you?"

He gave her an innocent look and shook his head, and she gaped. _He was teasing her._ This wasn't a little remark under his breath that could be taken a dozen different ways. This was open and easy and suddenly both so like and unlike them that it made a warm, happy feeling spread through her chest.

"Naw. 'Course not. Ain't a bit funny."

"Because we could have beets and pickled asparagus tonight," she answered back, raising an eyebrow.

He held his hands in front of him, "Whoah. No reason to go straight to the damned nuclear option."

That was the moment that she decided it didn't matter what he was or wasn't looking at. Because this? What they'd been building since that first night in a rundown gas station? This was too important to ruin it with a bunch of did he or didn't he junior high school crap.

"Well, then I suppose I'd better clean these rabbits. Stew sounds good."

He grunted his affirmative grunt at her, and went to work chopping wood.

Later, the stew was thick and hot and filling, and she made biscuits to go with it. Daryl held his hands out in front of him for the bowl before she'd even finished dipping it out, which was his version of shouting with excitement. She pretended she didn't notice, but it added to her good mood.

He must have felt it the difference in the air, too, because he heaved a relieved sounding sigh as he settled in to eat his meal.

"You get your damned questions or a comment, but you don't get both," he said. "And you already picked comment, so don't start."

She smiled at him, "Well, the exercise has certainly done nice things to your ass, I was hoping it was doing the same for mine."

Daryl choked on his stew.

"Son of a bitch, you ain't never gonna stop now," he muttered, blowing on his stew before taking a piece of meat between his fingers.

Carol nodded. "Only if you really want me to?"

"First question," Daryl growled. "Where the hell you from? You don't talk like nowhere."

"I thought I didn't get my damned questions?"

"I sure as shit ain't sittin' through a whole night of comments," he said.

"Well, in that case it was my turn to go first," she said, waggling her eyebrows. Her voice turned serious, and she said, "Why did you stay with the group, after Merle was lost?"

It was a risk, but she'd wanted to know. The question had plagued her since they left for the CDC.

"You can't answer that one. Got to be one you can answer too, right? And I already asked one," his voice had gone soft, but he didn't seem at all upset. If she had to name the look on his face, she would call it pensive. He was staring at his stew, only glancing up at her every now and then.

Carol sighed, but didn't push. She would try again another time. "I'm from up around Helen," she answered. "I didn't speak much at all when it was time to start school. My mother was deaf, and my father was absent right up until they divorced and he decided to fight for custody. He got me because we were both hearing, and because I couldn't speak as well as my age suggested I should. It was all about the battle for him. Once he had me away from her, he went right back to not caring as long as I didn't embarrass him. I signed first, and preferred it. Probably partly because he forbade it, to be honest. I was in speech therapy for most of my childhood, so if I don't sound like anywhere, that's why."

She fully expected him to use up both his other questions following up on that one. To her relief, though, he said instead, "When I's a kid, Merle says a bunch of folks thought I was stupid, but I just didn't want to talk to nobody but him. I kind of remember thinking it was funny that nobody believed him when he said I could talk, but it's all fuzzy and I don't know if I'm really remembering it, or if my brain made it up from his stories. Hell, I knew that signing stuff? Probly never would've learned to talk at all, I figure. That why you picked up my signs so fast?"

"Maybe. I don't remember as much of it as I should, really." She didn't know if signing first had any bearing on how quickly she picked up the gestures he and Merle come up with together, but she did know it was why she hadn't ever been afraid of him. Daryl talked with his whole body, and it didn't always say the things that his mouth was saying. It wasn't anywhere near an infallible system, obviously, but she'd always known he wasn't like his brother.

She suspected even his brother wasn't like his brother. Merle Dixon put up one hell of a front. That much was obvious to her. Unfortunately, whether it covered up someone better, worse, or just different from what he appeared wasn't nearly as easy to figure out.

"Be good to know," Daryl said. "A way to talk without making any noise."

"I really don't remember, Daryl," she said softly. "Some of it, sure. Bits and pieces. But I wasn't allowed, and then I was with Ed, and I've forgotten nearly everything."

The crackling of the fire and the sound of the wind picking up filled the room, and she could swear she could hear every breath that each of them took. It had been a long time since she thought of her mother, or of how much she'd missed the woman as a child. One day her mother was a hero, fighting for her with everything she had, and the next she just disappeared. Gone forever. She'd been a teenager before she found out her mom committed suicide not long after losing her. When she did, Carol decided her father had killed her mother, just as if he'd used the gun himself. From that moment forward, all that mattered was getting away from him. Years later, she would wonder how much of her hatred for her father had been, well, fair. She knew for a fact that her father was better than Ed by far. And she more than suspected that what she once considered her horrible childhood, would have felt like heaven to the man sitting across from her. But it was far too late to change anything now.

"Gonna be colder than a witch's tit out there tonight," Daryl said.

Whether it was the abrupt change of subject or the colorful phrasing, it startled a laugh out of her. And once she'd started, it was a good long while before she could stop.

Only when she was finished catching her breath did she notice how smug he looked.

 _He did that on purpose_ , she thought, surprised.

"Tonight," she declared. "You get two cups of coffee."

He smirked at her, looking more than a little proud of himself. "Won't say no."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The first night that was shorter than the night before, Daryl didn't wake Carol for her watch. Partly because he wanted to try to judge just how long the night was, but mostly because he just needed a break from her. No, not from her. He needed a break from people. He needed to walk out under the trees alone and just breath for a while. It was overdue. The restless, uncomfortable energy growing inside him was an old companion, and he was a bit surprised by how long it took it to show up.

The days would start growing longer again now.

In the old world, people would be going crazy proving to each other how much they could spend on stuff that nobody needed. The people who weren't ringing bells and begging for money you didn't have, would be shoving you out of the way to get some damn thing that somebody told 'em they wanted. There would be insipid music playing over speakers in the grocery, and glitter everywhere. Not having to walk through that nonsense was a bonus.

Carol seemed like the kind of person who would have liked the holidays, though. He would bet that she'd put up a tree, and that her house smelled like sweets.

He banished that whole train of thought when he caught himself wondering if Ed had ever let Sophia have a Christmas something like the people on tv had.

He was staring across the span of ground that separated the house from her grave, and his throat was starting to close up.

No. Not thinking about any of that.

Carol said they needed to do one more run.

She'd surprised him at dinner the night before with plans to go after another vehicle, guns, and ammo. It was the dead of winter, cold and wet and dangerous, but she was right. They'd lost the SUV, and the bike offered neither shelter nor the ability to take any of their stores with them if they were forced to leave. And they needed at least one more gun, and some ammo.

Her idea was sound, but the thought of leaving their shelter for any passing asshole to take over was daunting. Daryl was tempted to have her stay here while he went out, except he knew they were going to have to go further than he could go in the space of an afternoon. No, the town was empty of anything of use.

They were going to be gone overnight.

He heard her before he saw her, and he braced himself for anger.

She held a cup of coffee under his nose until he reached up and took it, then settled herself across from him, a bundle of quilts and spiky hair.

"You didn't sleep."

He shrugged, "About time you had a whole night. Tired people make mistakes, and we're goin' out." She tilted her head at him, and he figured at this point he had a pretty good idea what she was about to say.

"So you should have slept, too."

"I'm used to not sleeping much. Never have really. Figure I'll go in now, take a good nap, then we can go."

They finished their coffee there on the second-floor balcony, the quiet of the morning settling around them in a way that Daryl was coming to like near as much as he liked bein' alone. That thought made goosebumps chase down his spine, the feelin' like somebody just stepped on his grave, and he shoved it back to the recesses of his mind where it could get itself lost if he were lucky. Damn sure ought not be flirting with _contentment_. Best damn way to get dead these day. Always had been the best damn way to bring on the loss of whatever thing was makin' you feel that way.

He wanted to tell her they would go tomorrow or the next day, when the curse he just brought on 'em had time to run out. But then he would have to explain the reason why, and he didn't want to ever have that conversation with her. She'd probably think he was bein' stupid or some shit. He'd learned his lesson on sharing some stuff.

He needed to lose himself in a place where the only sounds were the creaks and pops of the water in the trees freezing, and the wind rustling through the limbs. He despised the winter, but even now he was itching for the feel of the frozen ground under his feet, the little hints of the life sleeping all around him just waiting for warmth to return so it could come busting out all over. He needed _Spring_.

He needed to be alone.

"You going to take that nap?"

He shook himself like a dog come in from the rain and ran a hand through his hair.

"Yeah. You wake me up it gets to being too long. Not much sunlight these days." It was just a mood. Too little sleep for too long, and the fear of losing everything because they tried to make things better than okay.

Trying to be better than _okay_ had never, not once, worked out for him. And that's all it was.

Hell, first time for everything. They hadn't seen another soul since they left the group. Could be, they take a little trip, get themselves what they need, and get back home – get back _here_ , safe and sound. He needed to get the hell over himself and get some rest.

It didn't take long for Daryl to realize that they were in trouble. The house was remote enough that, now that there weren't a bunch of people and animals around, the scent of food on the wind didn't bring near as many of the dead their way as were heading out of the cities. Walkers, unless they were distracted by prey, followed the path of least resistance. But any sound, or light, or the scent of living things would draw them toward you. A shift in the wind could mean a shift in fortune, and there was no predicting or planning for it.

At the farm, he and Carol weren't enough of a presence to draw them from very far away. But as soon as they hit a real road that changed. They were in the territory of the dead, now. Daryl wanted to head North, all the way up to Fairburn, and check on some places he was familiar with, but it seemed like very mile was a battle and they were running out of both gas and daylight when they hit the outskirts of Peachtree City. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why there just so damned many around here. The only thing that made sense, was people. Live people, that they just hadn't seen yet.

Just the thought made his guts tie up in knots.

Carol's hands were twisted up in his shirt tail at his waist, and he wasn't sure if it was her shiverin' or his own, but he pulled into a thrift store parking lot just the same. There were a few dead shuffling around, and but not as many as they'd dodged at their other stops, and he was acutely aware of the gas in the bike.

Carol was off the bike and stretching quicker than a shot, moving around in such a way that he was pretty sure was as much about getting warm as it was about stretching her legs.

Daryl shook his head and exchanged looks with her, then held up one finger and indicated the lot.

If they didn't find what they needed here, it was time to find a place to camp for the night and get the hell back to the house come sun up.

They would worry about what happened when more dead found them there some other time.

The first car was empty of gas. And the second. And the third. Someone had already been here. Carol had taken out two while he was running the hose, and there were more heading their way from the far end of the lot.

She tapped his shoulder, tilting her head toward the growing group of Walkers, and he nodded at her as he tried one more time.

Empty. He was pulling his gear out of the tank when something fat, wet and white landed on the back of his hand. He felt more snow on his neck at the same time.

"Son of a bitch!" He shouted it, Walkers or no, and kicked the back-quarter panel of the car that had as hard as he could. The dent he left wasn't even satisfying. He knew it. He knew this mornin', wrapped up in blankets and sipping on coffee, that things were too good. He knew it.

He felt Carol stiffen behind him at the same moment as he heard the gunshot. She was already gone, sprinting across the lot, before he even managed to turn toward her.

He'd seen her kill a couple dozen Walkers by now. She didn't hesitate like she had in the beginning, and he trusted her with his back. She knew her limits, and didn't hare off acting like she was in some damn movie or something. She respected the hell out of the danger those things represented. If anything, Daryl figured she underestimated what she could do most of the time, and was a little over cautious as a result.

She sure as hell wasn't being cautious now. He'd never seen her like this before. She was across the space with her knife in the back of some suit wearing dead asshole's head before he switched the siphoning hose for his bow, and then she was in the middle of a group of five of the damn things.

He switched to his knife and took off, cursing a blue streak under his breath at the sound of her yelling.

She was screaming no, over and over again, at the top of her lungs and for a minute he thought she'd lost her mind. That she just broke on him, right there in front of a thrift shop because there weren't no gas.

But then he saw Carl _trouble magnet_ Grimes, big eyed and white faced, looking at the gun that was still too big for his hands like it had betrayed him.

There had only been one shot. Damn thing jammed on the kid. To his credit, the kid wasn't still for very long. He had his knife up, but a kid was a kid and it was a lot harder for him to try to end one of them with knife than at a good distance with a gun.

Daryl moved so that Carl was between them, tryin' to focus on gettin' the job done and not on how off the positionin' felt. There was a litany in the back of his head as they fought, his own voice whispering _she's fine, she's fine, she's fine_.

There were more shots, and then it was just them, back to back with the boy between them, surrounded by rotting corpses. Rick stood in front of them, T-Dog next to him.

The man still had his gun up.

"The fuck, Rick?" He was breathing heavy, the sweat dripping down his face cooling fast in the cold air. The snow was coming down faster, and Rick Grimes was still pointing a gun at his face. Daryl shifted without thinking, moving in Carol's direction.

Rick cocked the damned gun. T-Dog somewhere between more confused than nervous.

"Carl, get over here."

"You actin' like I'd hurt the kid, now?"

"I don't want to. But it's been a while, Daryl. You understand I can't just assume I can trust you, right? Come on, Carl."

Rick looked torn between caution and gratitude, but Daryl wasn't in the mood to give the man credit for _feelin' bad_ about acting like an ass. "Carol just saved his ass! Where were you at, huh? Leadin' the Walkers away while the kid was supposed to hunker down and fend for himself? Or you save that plan for little girls?"

The sound of Carol's breath hitching felt like a knife in his gut.

Rick's face was turning purple.

"Hey, now. Let's just everybody calm down. We're all friends here." T-Dog stepped in front of Rick's gun, looking supremely confident of his own safety.

He was either real brave or real stupid, and Daryl didn't really care which.

"Thought we was," Daryl answered. "Knew the asshole was gonna point a gun at my head _again_ , I'd've let his kid buy it!"

"Yeah, that's a lie," T said, grinning. "Why don't we all head back to camp and swap stories?"

"We're not showing them our camp." Rick declared.

Daryl rolled his eyes. "Could find it if I wanted to, hotshot."

"We don't need your food, but we can share a fire for a bit," Carol said softly. They'd been slowly shifting toward until they were nearly shoulder to shoulder, now that Carl wasn't between them. Her voice was close to his ear when she said, "I don't know about you but I'm cold, and I'm getting hungry, and I don't feel like getting swarmed again because you have to yell at each other."

"You were the one shouting up a storm a minute ago," Daryl whispered. She gave him a look out of the corner of her eye that he couldn't quite interpret.

"Come on, Dad. It's Daryl and Carol. They aren't going to try to kill us," Carl said. "And they're bringing their own food."

"There are three rabbits over at the bike if the Walkers didn't get to them. We'll add them to the pot, along with two cans of beans and three potatoes," Carol offered, smiling brightly. "And I have half a chocolate bar in my bag that Carl can have after dinner.

Daryl bristled. "One can of beans and a potato. You give away all my damn meat, we're keeping the canned goods."

"Fair enough." Rick gestured in a vaguely northeastern direction. "We're about a mile and half that way in some fenced in self-storage units. You'll leave after you eat." He made the last sound like a proclamation.

Carol nudged him with her shoulder as she passed, strolling almost casually toward the bike that would make it that mile and a half, but not much further without gasoline. He followed her, saying as much under his breath when they had some distance from the others.

"Just as soon find gas and get on home," he said. It sounded a little too much like pouting to his own ears.

She sighed, "Honestly? Me too. But that's just hurt feelings over Rick being an ass. And he wasn't exactly wrong, you know. It's been a while. Besides, they're probably where all the gasoline in this parking lot disappeared to. We go, we make nice, we figure out something to trade for some gas."

"They've likely stripped the whole damned place clean they got a camp that close. Have to head home, then start all over again in another direction. We're on borrowed time, tryin' to keep our place with rocks and a couple of sharp fuckin' sticks." She was nodding, but he got the impression he could have been singing dirty drinking songs at her and she would have been doin' the same. Her eyes were far away. "You okay?"

When he shifted to get in front her eyes, she turned her head so she still wasn't looking at him. "I'll be fine."

"Will be ain't is," he whispered. "I shouldn't'a brung her up like that. I just – "

"You were angry. And you were right. Please stop."

"Yeah. Sure. Let's go see what all Glenn's found around here. Ought to steal him out from under that jackass. Got guts, and a talent for findin' shit."

She made a humming sound in the back of her throat that was neither agreement nor disagreement as she slung her leg over the back of the bike. "Come on, then. Let's get this over with."


	8. Chapter 8

When the gate closed behind them, it felt more like confinement than safety. Daryl figured he weren't the only one who thought so, either, goin' by the way Carol's fingers dug into his sides. He focused on the air goin' in and out of his lungs and on cataloguing the placement of all of their former group as a way of distractin' himself from the way his stomach rolled when her grip tightened. Daryl didn't like people bein' behind him, and he didn't like people pawing at him, but sometimes if he kept remindin' himself that it was her he could hide it from her. Carol would likely take it all manner of wrong, and it bothered him more that she would think he didn't want her to touch him than it did that somebody was touchin' him. That was somethin' that he might ponder on later, if he couldn't find a way to chase it out of his head all together.

Still, there was this thing she always did right before she let go, something between a pat and a rub just above his waist before her fingers trailed along his side and away. He wouldn't go so far as to say he liked it, exactly, so much as that he anticipated it in a not bad kinda way. He kept one eye on her as she crossed the asphalt, walking slowly toward where the rest of the group was all huddled together, mouths gaping open.

Rick and T-Dog were getting closer, the latter grinning wide, "Almost wouldn't have recognized Carol, man," he said.

Daryl blinked in surprise, then turned his head in time to catch her opening her arms wide toward Glenn and walking right into the middle of the group. As much as he thought Rick was a jackass for the way he'd acted in the parking lot, she was being a bit less cautious than she should. He whistled a be careful at her, and she tossed his way. Right. He wasn't the one walking into a group of people that might have decided they weren't friends anymore.

Which reminded him that he hadn't answered T. "Ain't no different," he said, tilting his head toward her. Sure, she was wearing a few more layers and she'd changed out those horrible girl shoes for some tennis shoes so at least she wouldn't fall in the middle of a fight, but other than that it was still just Carol. "Got her shoes," he said, nodding.

"Yeah. Right. It's the shoes," T said, grinning. Rick was just standing there, looking like he was waiting for something.

"Time the food gets done sun'll be down," Daryl started, just as Lori and Carol arrived. It wasn't until he was handing the game bag and a couple of potatos to Carol that he realized he'd been getting' 'em ready for her. She smiled at him, big and bright, and his stomach twisted.

Next he knew, her and Lori had their heads together over a camp stove, tittering back and forth and gigglin' like little girls. He lit a cigarette and found a place to lean while he smoked, ignoring the stares he was getting.

Rick made a scoffing in the back of his throat and said, "I'm gonna switch watches with Maggie. We need to talk."

Daryl gave him half a nod, then shrugged at T-Dog, "So what do you think he's gonna want in exchange for stayin' inside these gates 'til sunrise? Ain't got much."

"Sunrise?" T's face fell. "Man, Rick's waitin' for you to ask to come back. He's just makin' ya sweat a little."

"Ain't happenin'," Daryl said, choking back a smart remark. "Just lookin' for gas and a truck. Somethin' got a bed big enough for the bike, a cab to sleep in, and a tank of gas. Just let us know what direction y'all ain't cleaned out so we got a chance, s'all we askin'. She wants dinner and a visit, an' I'm all for that, but ain't nothin' else changed."

He didn't know until he said it that it was a lie. These people had changed. They were leaner, dirtier, and their eyes were sharper and quicker moving. They were more like people he was real damned familiar with, the kind he'd been seein' in the mirror since he got old enough to notice the difference.

"Look, that was his kid, y'know? And I'll be honest, man, we need you. I don't think anybody really knew how much food you were bringing in 'til you weren't, and that was wrong. I admit that. I've been out there, and I haven't even seen something to shoot at."

Daryl met the other man's eyes long enough to get uncomfortable, then took a drag off his cigarette to buy himself some thinkin' time. He wanted to say it right. "Ain't about that. Could take you out in the morning. Set some snares. Show you how to reset 'em. Go out just before sunup, just the three of us. Gonna have to go a ways from here, though. Ain't nothin' but landscaped bullshit all around you. But tell me somethin', how you decide things?"

"Rick's a good leader," T said.

"Yeah, and that answers my fuckin' question. I don't got nothin' again' 'im. Man's lookin' out for his family, and I get that. And I ain't sayin' he don't do a good job leadin', either. But me and Carol? We got our own ways, y'know? 'sides, we ain't found Merle yet. And even if we had? Rick was pointin' a gun at my head again not an hour ago. Man, I hung out with Merle and his so-called buddies, and ain't none of them pointed a gun at me near as much as Rick Grimes."

"Which buddies are those? 'Cause that's a nice paint job his bike has, Daryl. You understand how a person might find that comparison insulting?" He'd noticed Rick approaching, but he hadn't expected him to interrupt the discussion.

Daryl shrugged, "You understand how a man might find a gun pointed at him unpleasant? I ain't gonna defend Merle. He's an asshole. Got asshole friends. He's still my brother. You ain't got the first clue what you're talking about when you talk about him."

"Dinner's almost ready," Carol said, putting herself in between them and smiling at Rick. "Lori sent me to get all of you."

Daryl blew out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "You want me to ask these guys if we could stay with 'em?," he said, loud enough for every one of 'em to hear, from Maggie up next to the gate to the group gathered in front of the camp stove waiting on their stew.

Carol shook her head, but he noticed that she was staring at him instead of meeting Rick's gaze. "Let's just have a good visit, okay? Part friends in the morning. There's no reason to fight, we're only going to be here for a little while."

She was trying to tell him something with her expression that he just wasn't catching. He gave her a half shrug so she'd know he was missing it, but she just whistled caution at him again.

He nodded at her and moved toward the group.

Daryl spent dinner watching her talk to everyone in turns, smiling and nodding and laughing. There was somethin' off about her laugh. Somethin' not quite real about it, but he seemed to be the only one that was noticing. He was only half paying attention to what was said, instead watching the way Hershel and Glenn kept glancing between him and Rick when they thought he wasn't looking.

Later, just as the sun was starting to dip below the horizon, Rick said, "I'm relieving Maggie on watch. Walk with me."

He shot a glance at Carol, whispering something in Beth's ear that made the girl's eyes light up and her smile brighten. He whistled "headed east" and waited for her to signal acknowledgement before he nodded and climbed to his feet.

"That works good for you guys. The whistles?" Rick sounded like a man who was trying very hard to be pleasant.

Daryl shrugged. "Got hand signals too. Walkers come to sound. Come to scent. Come to light. Got a lot of people here, all bunched up together, and there's a good breeze. Gonna have 'em bunched up against your gates by mornin'."

Rick nodded. "We're going to need to move soon. We pick them off as they get close. Can't do much in the dark except watch for people and listen. People'll bring light with them. Walkers just rattle the fences. It can be hard to take them out in the dark, so unless it starts to make too much noise we just let them be until there's light."

"Gonna draw a herd eventually," Daryl said.

Rick nodded. "Yeah. We could use you here, Daryl. If you want me to apologize for earlier, with Carl? I will. You've been gone a long time, and this world, it changes people. It scared me, seeing him between you guys. I didn't know how much the world might have changed you."

Rick leaned in a bit, trying to meet Daryl's eyes, his face open and friendly lookin'.

"Yeah. World changes people," Daryl agreed, not quite forgiveness but not a grudge, either. "As for the other, we're gonna find Merle." He didn't say that they had something better than what they did. Hell, for all he knew Hershel would want his farm back. Instead, he said, "It's a trade-off. Two people is quieter, less scent for the wind to carry, need less food. Hell, we need less of everything. Got fewer hands, though. Not near as much help."

"Exactly. There's safety in numbers, Daryl."

"Only if it's the right numbers. They follow you, and how you run things is up to you, but me and Carol, we ain't followin' people anymore. Can be friends. Hell, we want to trade some stuff with ya, but I think Carol's handlin' that with your wife," Daryl grunted, frustrated with the ire growing on Rick's face, "ain't about whether we think you're good at it or not, man. You could be the best leader on the planet, wouldn't make no difference to us. Ain't never decided nothin' for herself, right? I been followin' behind Merle since – well, hell of a long time. Time to grow the fuck up and can't do that while we're askin' you when to eat, sleep and piss, man."

The muscles in Rick's jaw were working themselves into a frenzy, but the other man nodded stiffly at him and strode ahead to whisper something to Maggie. The woman hadn't spent much time around Daryl before, and he didn't know her other than as the woman Glenn was ass over tits for, so he just nodded at amiably before turning on his heel and going off to find Carol.

She was in the area that had been "assigned" to them, and it nearly made Daryl turn around and go back to have another talk with the man he'd almost called friend just a minute ago.

"Well?" She said, head tilted to the side and eyebrows nearing her hairline.

Carol was sitting with her back against the outside of one of the storage units, far enough from the others for the darkness to hide them from the other group.

"Trust 'em to keep watch, at least" Daryl said. They had two blankets and a sleeping bag, but he'd intended them to be inside a building or at least a car. The wind whipped between the buildings, and sleet and snow were mixing together to make a wet mess of everything.

The positioning, he knew, was Rick's little statement. This sign that Daryl's "group" was welcome inside the fences but away from "his people" was meant to make them break down and ask to come back, Daryl was sure of it.

"Damn prick."

Carol sighed, "We'd've been outside anyway." She was trying to sound upbeat, but Daryl could hear her teeth chattering.

"Be home tomorrow. Just one night," he handed her both bedrolls. "Get warm."

"Don't be an idiot. Come on. We'll share body heat."

Her hand landed on his arm, startling him into shuffling away from her. Nausea hit hard and fast, and he turned his head while he took deep breaths.

Carol had grown very still.

"Sorry."

"No problem," he said. "Um –," he'd knew that almost throwing up at the thought of snuggling under blankets with a woman could be taken badly, but for the life of him he couldn't think of a damned thing to say.

"No, I know you don't like to be surprised. I don't either. I wasn't thinking."

"Just like to see it comin'. Ain't personal."

"I know. Forgive me?"

Damn woman. "Ain't done nothin' wrong. Stop apologizing all the time."

"Sorry."

He turned his head to glare at her, only to find they were too far apart for him to see her in the dark.

"Get closer. Can't see you."

She scooted close enough to feel, the reached across him long enough to drop the blankets over him. "Better?"

He could feel her shivering.

"Get your ass over here," he said, lifting his arm. "Can't take all that shaking."

Carol curled into his side, one arm slug around his waist and her hair tickling his nose. She was was damp and cold and smelled of exhaust fumes and stewing rabbit. The scents went together better than he would have imagined them. Daryl took a silent inventory of every place they were touching, forcing each muscle into relaxation. That's Carol's knee against his left thigh. Just her knee. It was only Carol's arm around his waist. Her arm was just resting there. She wasn't trying to hold him down, her arm just weighed that much. It wasn't much really. Just heavy enough to be there. He could move if he wanted to. Except it was Carol's arm, and it felt kind of nice. Just touching, nothing else.

He was asleep before he got to the feel of her head on his shoulder.

He woke to the sound of footsteps approaching. He looked up to see T-Dog a short distance away, smirking at him as he tried to extricate himself from Carol without waking her.

"I'm awake," she whispered. "Sun's not up yet."

"Taking T-Dog out. Layin' some snares. You sleep another couple hours. We'll head out when I get back."

"Maggie and Glenn are going out and bringing us a pickup with a tank of gas. They might not be back before noon."

Daryl stopped in the middle of rearranging the blankets around her, and said, "How the hell did you manage that?"

"Three boxes of those tampons you say I hoard and a pack of condoms."

"Why the hell are you carryin' around condoms?" The question was out before he could catch it, and he heard a muffled snort from him that told him T was taking every damn bit of this conversation the wrong way.

"Don't worry, there's plenty more where those came from. I'm in charge of inventory, right?" Carol winked at him. Winked. The heat coming off his face woulda been enough to keep them both warm.

"You happy?"

"Ecstatic. Be careful. Bring me back a nice plump rabbit."

"You'll be lucky I bring you a rat," he muttered, fighting a grin.

"We won't get anything if you don't kiss the lady goodbye and get moving," T said.

"Don't be an asshole," Daryl said, straightening and reaching for his bow. "Or I won't show you a damned thing."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The blankets cooled off fast without Daryl there to help warm them, and soon Carol was on her feet, stomping around to try to get the blood moving in her extremities and muttering under her breath about hating the cold and the damp. She shook out the blankets, wishing for a way to dry them before rolling them up, but in the end she shrugged and got down to it. There really was no point in wishing for things you couldn't have, and they would be home tonight with dry blankets, mattresses, and a fireplace to keep them warm. The strings Daryl used to tie the roll of bedding together were old, worn shoelaces tied end to end until they were long enough to wrap around the roll multiple times, and Carol was just to the point of tying the whole thing together in preparation when a throat cleared behind her.

"Can we talk?" She should have known Rick would make his way over to her.

"Sure!" Carol smiled brightly, then nodded toward the knot that was not cooperating at all the way it did when Daryl did it. "Put your finger right there and hold?"

Rick complied, "So, you two are really happy on your own?"

She took a moment to finish up and stand straight before answering, the bedroll at their feet soaking up more moisture from the asphalt.

"Happy? I'm not sure that's a word anyone gets to use these days. You'll have to ask Daryl about what Daryl thinks. But we're making do, why?"

Carol hadn't noticed that she and Daryl kept a certain distance between them, not really, until she was back around other people. She noticed it now. From her conversations last night to Rick this morning, everyone seemed to push themselves about four inches too close. Rick didn't mean it any more than Glenn meant it yesterday. Any more than Lori meant it while they were cooking last night. But it was consistent and distracting, now that she'd identified the source of her discomfort.

"What he said…" Rick started, then stopped and took a deep breath, "you don't think I…"

Carol brushed her hands across her thighs, taking a very intentional step away from the man looking at her, "I'm not talking about that. I'm not angry with anyone, that has to be enough."

He just kept staring at her, like he could look past her expression and into her heart. He'd proven more than once that he couldn't, but it still made her antsy. "So where are you guys staying?"

She blinked, then chuckled, "We're just passing through. We're not looking to stay here, Rick, you don't have to worry about that."

"We could use you."

"You could use Daryl, I'm the price you're willing to pay to get him," Carol snapped, harsher than she intended. "Don't patronize me Rick. We're friends, but we both know I'm no great asset. If you want him to stay, ask him."

She picked up the bedroll and walked away as quickly as she could, not even caring if it looked like she was running. Because she was running. He hadn't deserved that. Not really.

They could stay here.

Carol dropped their things next to the bike and wrapped her arms around herself. It was cold, and there was a warm fire not very far away at all. She had friends there, too, though she hadn't been acting like it very much.

They could come back to this group and it would be like they never even left. She knew that.

"I don't know what he said, but I know what he meant to say," Lori said.

Carol hadn't even seen her approach. If she'd been a Walker, it would all be over.

"He didn't say anything wrong." She forced a small smile for the other woman. "That was all on me. I'll apologize before we leave."

"So, you're still leaving?"

Carol shrugged, "Nothing has changed since I left the first time. I'm not following anyone."

"What about Daryl?"

There was something in her tone of voice that Carol couldn't quite identify. It hovered in the space between curiosity and worry. "Daryl and I have a system. We decide things together."

Lori blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and nodded, stepping a bit closer. Carol concentrated on not stepping back. "So you work well together? The two of you?"

She shrugged, "Better than either of us would have thought when we started out, probably. Are you okay? Really?"

Lori's smile faded around the edges, but she nodded, "Of course I am. I feel terrible, Rick barely talks to me, I spend every waking minute petrified that one of those things is going to get Carl, I have no idea how any of us will survive once the baby comes, if I even survive the birth, and my friend took off without so much as a goodbye. I'm fine."

Carol blinked. "You have your husband, you have Carl, and you have Hershel to help you when it's time for the baby to come. You _are_ fine. You're as fine as any of us can be."

"I'd be better with a friend."

"I'm not going to feel guilty about that." Carol said. She set about securing the bedroll to it's habitual place on the bike. She didn't know why she bothered, Daryl would almost certainly roll his eyes and redo it. "I love you, all of you. I really do, Lori. But that doesn't change anything."

"See, I don't understand that. You need numbers. It must be almost impossible to make it with only two people. Do you ever get enough sleep? And we could use you both. Your absence is really felt. Not just Daryl's, either. Rick may not know how to say it, and I may not be able to convince you, but we need you, too."

Carol sighed. Lori meant it. They all probably meant it, but that didn't mean it was something that she could do. "I just can't. I hope you'll understand that, Lori. I'm not angry, I don't hate anyone, I don't even dislike anyone. I just need – I need to make my own choices for once in my life. It doesn't matter if Rick's making good choices or bad choices. It's not about that. It's that it wouldn't be me making them."

"But you'll follow Daryl wherever he goes."

"You got that one backwards." Daryl's voice visibly startled Lori, and Carol fought a grin. It was satisfying to see him sneak up on someone else for a change. She was so amused by the other woman's reaction that it took a moment for his words to sink in.

"Carol said you decide together," Lori said. She was smirking and giving Carol a look out of the corner of her eye that spoke volumes of misunderstanding.

"What she said," Daryl answered, nodding. He tilted his head in the direction of their former group. "You got all your goodbyes out? We're wastin' daylight."

They could stay here. He didn't want to. He wanted to go home. But if she asked right now, they would stay here.

"Go talk to Rick, at least, before we go." Carol said. "Maybe set a time we can meet and check in again? If that's something he wants to do."

Daryl's exit was as silent as his approach.

"So, does he _always_ do everything you say?" Lori's shoulders straightened, and a blatantly fake smile took over her face. "Like, all the time? In all situations? The ins and outs of…things?"

It took a moment for Carol to catch on to the innuendo. She made jokes every now and then. Small ones, because she liked watching Daryl sputter. She was always careful to keep them tame enough to be safe, to not make him uncomfortable. But something about the idea of someone seeing her as a person someone like Daryl may want in that way just felt wrong. The possibility felt shocking and foreign. That's why there was such a long pause before she rolled her eyes and said, "We aren't like that."

"Yet," Lori said. The tone was all good-natured ribbing, but it sounded forced. It felt like this was the kind of conversation Lori wanted to be able to have with her but wasn't quite comfortable with yet. It was an offer to go back in time, to have the friendship they'd started all the way back on a highway, with granola bars and bottled water.

They could stay. They could slip right back into their allotted positions within this group of people.

If one day had her feeling like all her pointy corners were rubbing uncomfortably up against other people's flat edges, then what would it be like in a week? A month?

Across the way, Daryl and T-Dog were loading the motorcycle into the back of a black Chevy pickup that had seen better days. Carol had a vague notion of just how heavy the bike was, and she realized that she would be in T's place when it came time to reverse the procedure. She couldn't imagine that Daryl was looking forward to that.

As if he could sense her thoughts across the distance, Daryl looked up and right at her. He let out a whistle meant "meet me", then turned back to his work. They were using bits of rope to secure the bike when she came up to them.

"Easier out than in," Daryl said, answering a worry she hadn't told him she had. He waved one hand in the direction of the large piece of plywood that had slid to the ground. "Better once we find us a proper ramp."

"There's a Harley dealership not too far," T said.

Daryl was already nodding, "Know the one you mean. Yeah, they'll have what we need. Any luck, won't be over-run. Picks our direction for us, right?" He was looking at her when he said it, and she nodded at him out of habit as much as anything else.

"We should go soon, though," she said.

Daryl nodded. "We're outta here in ten."

It was closer to half an hour. By the time they were pulling out onto the road, the truck's heater was blowing warm and the cab had settled in a comfortable quiet. Three miles down the road, muscles she hadn't realized she'd been tensing began to relax.

"We could have stayed, if you wanted to," Carol whispered.

Daryl looked at her out of the corner of his eye like she'd lost her mind. "The hell would I want to go and do a damn fool thing like that for?" His eyes cut quickly back to the road, and she saw tension across his shoulders. "You want to, we can go back?"

Carol wanted to say that she couldn't stand to look at Rick every day and not grow to hate him. She wanted to say that she liked their silences and the way they worked together. She wanted to be able to find words for the storm of almost-thoughts that felt like they were building behind a wall in her mind, waiting for her to be able to deal with them. She wanted to be able to express what his companionship meant to her, and that she thought he was the best friend she'd ever had. Not that she'd had many, but of them Daryl was the one that _fit_ in a way no one ever had. She wanted to say she wasn't ready to just walk away from the tiny grave that she hadn't yet been able to approach no matter how long she stared. But she was afraid that she wouldn't say any of it right. That it would sound less like what she meant, or more like what the others had implied.

Instead, she said, "What, and leave behind the biggest stash of tampons and coffee this side of the Chattahoochee?"

One side of his mouth tilted up just a hair, and the tension in his shoulders faded. "Damn straight," he said. "Best get home before somebody takes all our shit."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

They decided against the Harley Dealership based on distance and weather, and the idea that they needed to get home. It was still spitting snow, but more importantly the temperature continued to drop so that everything that been even a little wet froze. The roads, were slick and treacherous, and the warm feeling that had permeated the cab of the truck in the first few minutes got siphoned slowly away by muffled curses and sharp inhales. Carol was scared out of her mind in the passenger seat, her knuckles white where they gripped the door handle, but she didn't whine about it. She just held on in absolute silence, as if the slightest noise would distract him and kill them both.

Neither of them was used to the kind of weather they were having, and winter was just beginning.

When the old farmhouse finally came into view, the sun was low in the sky. Carol sighed beside him, and Daryl caught himself before he did the same. It was still here, still standing, and something strange and unfamiliar tried to take hold of him. The feeling bordered on too much, too pleasant, and he shoved it away and went back to assessing the situation. Several Walkers had found their way to the front of the house, and their heads turned toward the truck and as they approached, then step by step they started moving toward the source of the sound. Everything about them seemed eerily in unison, and Daryl wondered if the tendency to move together was left over from being people or if it was something new that came to 'em after they died. He didn't let that thought linger, either.

Something had shifted between them in that storage lot. Daryl couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, but he knew it was more trouble than it was worth and he was going to keep ignoring it.

Carol let out a sigh beside him. "Do you think any of them made it inside?"

"Don't look like it," Daryl said. "I'll lead 'em away from the house. You go on up on the porch, but don't go in yet. After I take care of these assholes we can get the bike down. Put the truck at the front door and the bike at the back. Then we'll worry about supper."

She looked for a moment like she was going to argue, but instead she just nodded and blew out a breath. "Fine. But we're checking the house together."

Daryl nodded. "Rather take care of 'em from a distance. Any of 'em got in the house we'll be putting 'em down up close up and personal, but I don't think they got in."

The bike was a pain in the ass to get out of the back of the truck. They didn't have ramps, and the old piece of plywood that they were using wasn't a replacement by any stretch of the imagination. By the time they finished they both had skinned knuckles, the bike was on its side in the dirt, and he was ready to just be inside with the fire started.

"I'm sorry," Carol said. "I should have –"

"You done this before?" Daryl was yelling, and that would draw Walkers, but it slipped by his guard and he couldn't just suck it back in.

Her eyes flew open wide. "No. I'm –"

"Don't you say sorry one more damned time. Y'ain't got one damned thing to be sorry about. Just stop with that shit."

"Sor – "

"Shhh!"

Carol crossed her arms and just looked at him like she was waiting for something.

She probably had a bug up her ass about him yelling. He rolled his eyes at her and said, "What?"

"Nothing. We're both cold and wet, and one of us is really cranky. So lets finish this, clear the house, and then – well, we'll decide what to do after that when we get there."

She was using her 'voice of reason' tone, now. Like she was talkin' to a toddler or something.

"Ain't _cranky_."

"Fine. Are we going to leave it on its side, or are we going to move it to the back door so we have transportation at both exits?"

His plan hadn't involved anything beyond getting the damned thing covered with a tarp and getting out of the weather, but having transportation at both exits sounded good. "Clearin' the house first. Then I'll move shit around while you get a fire started and some coffee on."

When he saw the stockpile of supplies still stacked in the dining room, something inside of him loosened a bit. Every room they checked and found exactly as they'd left it untied a knot in one muscle or another until he stepped back outside into the frigid air feeling almost lightheaded with relief, knowing that Carol was putting on a kettle for coffee and finding something for them to eat.

He got the bike up and moved it next to the kitchen door. He covered it with a tarp, to both protect it from the weather and to keep it from shouting out that someone was there if a person happened by. Come spring, they would need to start fencing. Something close in to the house, and sturdy. Maybe plant something, if they could figure out how to do that.

Spring was a long way off, and the odds were that they would be back on the road and looking for Merle when the weather changed. Best not think too much about anything beyond the here and the now, that was a good way to get yourself killed.

Or disappointed.

By the time he'd stomped off the last vestiges of his mood and slipped in the kitchen door, the house smelled of chilli and Carol was standing in front of the fireplace. One hand was rubbing at the small of her back, and she had her head thrown back and her eyes closed. There was a tiny little smile on her face that spoke of enjoying a good stretch instead of rubbing at sore spots, and something jumped all the way up out of his chest and got caught in his throat.

He decided it must just be guilt for yelling earlier. And that he was hungry. And tired. And it felt good to be locked inside this house where they were both almost safe. The guilty/hungry/tired/kinda safe feeling pushed him further into the room and he cleared his throat before saying, "Sorry. For yellin' atcha."

The smile she gave him was soft and fond looking.

Daryl suddenly felt like he forgot something really important outside.

"That's okay. We were both on edge. Feeling better now?"

He nodded. "That chilli?"

"Yep. I doctored it with some hot sauce I found in the pantry. And we have a few stale oyster crackers."

The couch was pushed up against the wall, too far from the fireplace for the warmth to have reached it yet, so he settled himself on top of their pile of mattresses and reached for the bowl Carol was holding out in front of her.

"Better than stuff Lori called soup last night."

Her eyebrows drew together. "Well, what we had on hand had to be stretched a lot further last night."

"Shit. Didn't mean nothin' bad. Just mean you're a lot better at cookin' is all."

"Mmmm. And you don't like Lori."

Something in her voice made him feel like he'd stepped in something he didn't know was there. "Pffft. Lori don't like me none. Thinks I ain't good enough to be around her family. And she's one of them people that talks all the time whether she's got anything to say or not. I like the quiet, and she's got to fill it up ever' chance she gets. Suppose I like her just fine where I don't gotta listen to her. Ain't like I'm hopin' a Walker'll have himself a nibble or anything."

She was staring at him. "I think that's the most I've ever heard you say about anybody."

"You asked! Besides, weren't puttin' down your friend. Know you like her. You're still a hell of a lot better cook than her, though."

"Thank you," Carol said, grinning. "I think."

They finished the meal in the kind of quiet that Daryl liked. The kind of quiet that just was, where there wasn't the feeling that one or the other was out of sorts. It was comfortable.

They'd gotten into a habit of either playin' one of her word games, or making up signs and signals for different things and drilling each other on them before settling in for the night, but they were late getting back and it was already beginning to fall dark.

Daryl cleared his throat. "Was thinkin', maybe we don't have to have anybody on watch tonight. Snow's pickin' back up. Ain't nobody in their right mind ain't already found a place to hunker down. Door's are all locked. We can move a couple things, barricade 'em good, and both of us can sleep."

Carol hummed. "I did like sleeping all night."

Daryl nodded. "That's the plan, then. Not all the time. But tonight."

"Sure, um…"

"Can share blankets, too. It's colder than shit in here still." The fire was warm, and the food in his stomach was warmer, but he said it anyway.

Anyway, Carol was nodding as she carried their coffee cups back toward the kitchen. She didn't call him on his exaggeration while they were moving furniture around in front of the doors. She didn't mention that the fireplace had warmed the whole room as they settled down on the mattresses and pulled the blankets over them. And best of all, she didn't take it to be anything it wasn't. She didn't get all huffy and accuse him of making a pass. Instead, she just patted his arm a couple of times before saying goodnight. He curled up on his side, his back to her, and listened to the soft sound of her breathing.

Hours later, long after he thought she drifted off, he heard her whisper, "Merry Christmas" at him.

That must it then, he figured. The reason everything had felt so strange all evening. It was Christmas Eve night, or close enough to it. How messed up was it that it was probably the best one he ever had?

"In the mornin'? You want? I can cut down a tree."

She snorted. "We can bring in a tree's worth of firewood and call it even."

"We're gonna be fine, Carol," he whispered back. "We got enough of everything to still be right here come Spring."

"Yeah. I think so, too."


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

They fell into their new routine like an exhale. One night he would take the first watch. The next night she would take the first watch. And every third night they would sleep next to each other, breathing in the warmth of another person as they whispered back and forth in the dark.

Those conversations were different. Late at night, knowing that they would never talk about it in the harsh daylight, they said things that they would regret sharing if the other ever so much as hinted at what was said.

Carol talked about Sophia. How she still dreamed that she ran into the woods after her daughter. Sometimes the dreams were good. She would kill the Walkers herself, and Sophia would look at her with big shocked eyes and then run into her arms, safe and whole and amazed at what her mama had done. The worst parts of those nights was waking to find them dreams. Other times, she would throw herself between the teeth and her little girl and wake with phantom pain and a deep satisfaction that she saved her. The worst nights, Sophia screamed for her, but no matter how far she ran her little girl was always just out of sight, in danger, calling out for a mother that never came.

When she talked about Sophia, Daryl would just listen. Part of him still felt like apologizing, but when he thought about it, something just felt wrong. It was just too close to asking her to _comfort him_ , to say his failure was okay, when it was her little girl that was gone.

Sophia wasn't his. He didn't think that Carol needed him to say he wished that she was. He figured that was pretty damned obvious.

On the nights when Daryl woke her with his tossing and turning, he was always running from somebody. And sometimes, in the middle of the night, he let himself say things before he was fully awake that clued Carol in to the monsters that haunted his dreams. Sometimes it was his father, sometimes it was his mother, and every so often it was Merle.

Slowly, the distance between them on the nights they both slept dwindled down to nothing, and they would wake tangled up in each other as often as not. They both tried to avoid it, because neither of them was fond of waking with any kind of weight on top of them, for reasons that were more similar than either would ever state outright. Daryl was terrified that he would feel her against his back as he was coming awake and hit her before he knew who she was. But Carol seemed to have some kind of knack for waking up in time to move out of the way, and he often woke to see her staring at him, waiting for it to be okay to lay on his arm and squeeze, or to pat his shoulder real soft like before they rolled over an went back to sleep.

The first time Daryl's woke up with his hand under the hem of her shirt, he thought for sure he'd be sleeping across the room on the lumpy couch from there on out.

But without thinking about it long enough to change his mind, he whispered, "This okay?"

She didn't say anything at first, even though he knew that she was awake, so he started to move away.

Carol's fingers closed over his wrist and she said, "It's fine. Don't…I like that."

And so that's where they stayed, dancing on the line between friends and companions and something that neither of them wanted to name.

By the time they were comfortable moving in and out of one another's space both awake and asleep, spring was in the air. Merle hadn't shown up the way he usually did when Daryl stayed still for a while, and they were both getting cabin fever, anyway. There was no choice, really, but to make a run. Neither of them wanted to be gone long. There was too much work to do, and the chance that someone would come along while they were gone hovered unspoken between them. Eventually, it was decided to take two trips. The first would be to check and see what Rick and the others might be lacking or want to trade and to check a couple of places nearby that Daryl thought Merle might be. They would take the bike, which was more maneuverable and faster, and scout for places that may hold things they needed. They would leave early in the morning and be back before the sun went down. The plan was to take what information they gathered to better plan a trip using the truck, in the hopes that two short trips would leave their place unguarded for less time than one long one.

They'd pulled the bike into the trees and were just finishing up with covering it with the tarp they carried and arranging limbs and leaves from the ground over it. From a distance, eyes should glide right over it without noticing. They were taking the last little distance on foot, just in case the noise would cause them a problem. He'd decided to approach from the south, and to skirt everything else to get to what had been the public areas, in the hopes that any dead still wandering wouldn't be inside the gates. They'd never properly opened because of the sickness, but the timing of the outbreak made Daryl hope that most folks would have been ready for opening day, and there would be knives and supplies and at the very least some good sturdy boots for Carol.

Carol. His partner in crime and the annoying woman who hadn't stopped messing with him since she saw the sign pointing the way to the Georgia Renaissance Festival, and figured things out. She hadn't said a word, yet, but the smirk never seemed to leave her face, and every time she looked at him she would waggle her eyebrows.

"One," he said.

"One what?" She made a face at him that was so innocent that even a month ago he may have bought her act.

"One of those things going through your head. Go on. Take your best shot."

"I'll take three questions in return for one comment."

He shook his head, but took a deep breath and said, "Fine. Three. Go ahead."

"Did you wear tights? Because I'm picturing you in tights, carrying a sword."

Her eyes swept over him, slow-like and suggestive, and he could feel his face turning red. Of course that's the kind of question she had.

"I taught archery to little kids and collected a shitload of tips. It was a few weekends a year. It weren't a _lifestyle_." He didn't mention the occasional picked pocket, or the way Merle supplied a high-quality product that wasn't tobacco to the pipe shop. More pot went out the back via Merle than tobacco went out the front, with either no one the wiser or no one caring enough to put a stop to it.

"That wasn't my question. When you taught these youngsters, were you wearing tights?"

He was utterly and completely incapable of saying the words, so he just nodded and started walking. They were still a good half-mile away.

The laughter he expected didn't come, though, so he snuck a peak at her from under the fringe of his hair. It had grown long past the point where Merle would have held him down and took the clippers to it. He liked it. He liked the idea of just letting it grow, never cutting it again.

She was still staring at him, with her mouth slightly open and her head tilted. He could feel the heat coming off his face. "You got somethin' to say? Because you say it, you lose two questions and you owe me one."

She shook her head, swallowed, and said softly, "We should get moving. We don't have all day." She slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and walked by him, looking everywhere except at him.

Daryl snorted, and moved up alongside her. Under his breath, he said, "Focus". It was as much a reminder for himself as for her. The short trip north had been without major incident, but who knew how many people had stayed in their campers, tents, and RV's even though opening day had never happened. There was a reason he figured that Merle might come to look for him here. Hell, a great big part of him hoped that at least enough of the vendors had left wares behind that he'd be able to find a good knife for Carol. Most of what was on display was decorative, artsy shit, but he'd traded for several good ones from one of the smiths. He could maybe get some more bolts for the crossbow and pick up a bow to start teachin' Carol on.

If there was nothing here, they would have to start risking _sporting goods stores_ , and what wasn't picked over would likely be over-run and hard to get to.

But they'd been out dozens of times since they left the group, and they'd gotten good at working together. They could have nearly a whole conversation using nothing but their expressions and their hands. They worked well together. They would be fine. Hell, if the place was overrun they would just turn around and head on back.

It had been a long, hard winter, with sometimes whole days when they couldn't do anything but sit under piles of blankets and listen to the hail hitting the sides of the house. Daryl kept reminding himself that the house they were in had stood for over a hundred years, it wasn't the kind of house his family had squatted in when he was a kid. It wasn't going to fall down on top of him. They'd spent those days learning things from each other. Not pansy-ass things like favorite colors and what about the old world they missed the most (Carol's favorite color was red, and he didn't have to ask her to know that because her hands always drifted toward red things first when they were raiding shops.). Naw, after they went through all his old hunting signals, they talked about what they might need to communicate out in the world, and between them came up with ways to do that.

In this world, the more invisible you were the safer you were. And if they had one thing in common, it's that they both had plenty of practice trying to make themselves invisible.

They had arrived. And damn, the fence had been expanded.

Daryl had been aiming for a spot where they'd used the natural barrier of the forest to hide the goings on of the workers, far away from where anyone would have been camped and close to a couple of the shops he wanted to check.

Carol tilted her head at him, and he whistled for her to hide herself. He wished, now, that he'd cared enough at the start to check around, so he could know if this was done before or after the outbreak. Small changes happened year to year, after all.

There was nothing for it. He found a support and started to climb.

The other side of the fence was nothing but empty. No people, no Walkers, and he could see from here that about half of the shops had at least something still inside them. He dropped off the top of the fence on the inside and immediately felt hemmed in. But he knew Carol would be behind him, signal or no signal, in a couple of minutes. She would only give him so long to check things out before she either left or followed, and while leaving was the official plan he'd come to accept that it wasn't something she was going to do.

Better to have her at his back than following behind him at such a distance that they both may as well be alone. He gave the all clear and waited.

And waited.

He was just starting to get nervous when she came up behind him, breathing hard, rubbing her hands on her thighs.

He raised an eyebrow at her, and she glared.

He was half into imagining Carol's Battle With The Fence before he realized it and forced himself to file the impulse away for later.

It was almost eerie, the way there wasn't a single Walker to be seen. They moved slowly, starting at the booth nearest them and following the path. Most of it was useless, but he hid a smile when Carol slipped a pair a of silver and onyx earrings into her pocket.

Carol whistled a short tune, and he answered it by moving closer to her side.

It did feel like they were being watched. But he couldn't see or hear a damned thing, so there was a chance it was just the feel of abandoned festival. There should be drums, and belly dancers, and – it just felt off in a way that made his teeth itch.

When they got to the blacksmith shop that he was heading for, his chest got tight. Daryl didn't have friends who weren't Merle. Well, not before. But he did have people who were more like regular features in his life that he didn't hate. And trading stuff and telling tall tales with the man who sold his stuff here, that was always kinda fun. Unlike Daryl, who was just in it for the tips a few weeks a year, Jerry loved the theater of it all. For him, it was a lifestyle. Daryl had always walked the fence between thinking the big guy was crazy insane, and kind of admiring the way he lived like he wanted to no matter what other people thought. Even after spending a hundred nights by a campfire laughing with the man, Daryl still hadn't expected that seeing his work just sitting out would _hurt_ so much. It wasn't like they were close.

He cleared his throat and tilted his head toward the back. Where the good stuff was.

He looked at several, had even shoved one sheathed knife in his bag, before he found it.

He reached out, palm up, and Carol came over and put her hand in his without hesitation. The oddly warm feeling that spread through him at her action wasn't getting any less uncomfortable just because it was familiar. He squirmed a little before he started putting knives in her hand, measuring. His eye was still on the one he'd seen, the perfect one, but if she liked the feel of any of the others they could take them too.

He knew the instant she had it in her grip, that it was her knife. And from the way her face seemed to light up, so did she. She immediately put his old hunting knife away and kept the new in hand. He grabbed a couple more things, tossing them in his bag and then led her back out.

In the end, they'd been inside for nearly an hour and had picked up a few pieces of clothing, a couple more knives, some bolts, and the bow, arrows and quiver he'd wanted for Carol. The boots took the longest, but when he they found some that fit her just right he grabbed another pair just like them for later. He declared them finished at that point. As they were approaching the area that had been the front gate, however, Daryl decided he wanted to raid the first aid supplies that were usually kept at the paramedic post. That's when it happened. Five feet away from the building, an arrow flew past him and lodged itself in the door.

He was between Carol the direction the arrow had come from in a heartbeat.

A booming voice somewhere behind them said, "We have need of those! You're welcome to what you have, just follow the path and go out the gate."

Carol moved until they were back to back, her knife up and her eyes scanning the area. Her free hand brushed the small of his back in question and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He sent her a whistle while he was still looking for the source of the voice.

"Sir Daryl?"

Well, shit. That was something he could have gone his whole life without her hearing. He was never living that one down.

"Come on out!" Daryl shouted, and there he was.

The Blacksmith wasn't gone after all, though his weight was down by a third.

"Jerry?"

The big man beamed. "I thought that it looked like you! But it was hard to be sure from a distance. You can put that down."

Daryl shook his head. "Your bowman nearly shot my ass!"

"Dude, no. David and his family are still here. If he'd wanted to hurt you, he would have. But Doc Ben would kill us if someone got into the supply building."

"But everything else you just let folks steal."

Jerry smiled and nodded. "It isn't stealing if we don't mind them having it. If they're the types to get greedy, it doesn't end well for them. If they do like you were? Just what they need, with maybe a trinket or three? We meet them outside the gates and talk, see if they have need of a community. If you'd come to the campsite first, we would have made a list and sent a runner! It is a fine thing, indeed, to see your face again Sir Daryl. Lord Merle has been beside himself with worry that you had not yet arrived, and he had intent to set out after the upcoming equinox to free you from some foul situation."

His crossbow dipped before he caught himself. "Merle's here, then? Reckon I ain't seen him. How about one of them runners of yours goes and gets him, and then I'll decide what I want to put down and what I don't."

A quick whistle and Carol had planted her feet, standing ready to fight, but her answering signal told him she hadn't caught sight of that David person, either.

Jerry's face fell. The big man looked like his feelings were hurt. "Really, Daryl? You think I'd lie about your brother?"

He didn't think that, not really. Daryl was almost certain that Merle was on his way. As much as he'd wanted to be sure his brother was okay, and as much as he wanted to see his face, for some reason his insides had twisted themselves into a knot.

"Don't think it. But last time I figured I had an idea on what a man would and wouldn't do, he went and proved me wrong, so I'm just gonna have to take a few minutes this time and be sure. Ain't personal."

He'd grown used to it being just him and Carol. Sure, they were looking for Merle, but he still wasn't lookin' forward to Merle finding out that he'd gotten used to making his own choices.

Jerry always acted like he'd had just a little pot. Laid back, affable, and fine with whatever somebody else planned to do that night. The end of the world didn't seem to have changed that any. He just nodded and smiled and they all stood around like idiots. Waiting.

It wasn't long.

Merle was stalking toward him, grinning in that way that seemed like a good-natured threat.

Behind him, Carol made a half shocked, half amused sound and said, "Is that a kilt?"

"Where in the _nine hells_ have you been?" Merle said.

Daryl's throat closed up, and all of his words left him.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Carol had never paid Merle Dixon any mind at all. He was big and loud and she knew the others didn't like him, but in those days she had more immediate things to worry about than a couple of brothers who, as far as she could tell, brought in food and kept to themselves. She regretted that now, because if she'd paid more attention she may not have been quite so supportive about the whole "find Merle" plan.

The moment Merle Dixon opened his mouth, Daryl shrank in front of her. Not so much that anyone else might notice. If, for example, Rick Grimes were here, he would probably be focused on the way Daryl lowered his crossbow. He would miss how one foot went back to brace himself for the incoming impact of Merle's weight as the man launched himself at his brother. The aborted movement of Daryl's left arm as it almost but not quite came up to block a blow, but then wrapped around his brother's back instead. Someone who hadn't spent the last several months learning Daryl wouldn't notice that he was, for the briefest of moments, as wary of Merle as he was glad to see him.

Carol noticed.

As she fell into her accustomed position behind and slightly to the left of him, Carol noted the way Daryl kept adjusting his steps to keep himself between her and Merle. They were tossing half-serious insults back and forth as Merle led the way to the camp.

"Who else ya got?" Daryl asked.

Merle shrugged. "Think the big guy is the only one you know. Five men, two boys. Got a Doc, though, that was passin' through, he's the one saved my ass when Officer Friendly tried to kill me. Dave and his two ankle-biters, ain't big enough for much other than trouble. Got a long-haired asshole that likes to glare at people but can hunt and trap okay."

"That it?" Daryl was slowing his progress, one hand motioning for her to be less beside and more behind him. She whistled a be careful at him, one of the new signals that was meant to be about people and not Walkers. It was new, between them, and not one that had been part of Daryl's surprisingly extensive repertoire before. Merle wouldn't understand it.

The older man laughed. "Ain't gonna touch that baggage you picked up somewhere. Quit your frettin'. I swear, you're like an old woman with your worryin' and naggin'. Gonna put all that hair up in a bun and buy a dress?"

Daryl stopped in his tracks, shoulders squaring and chin up, and said, "Ain't none of your damned business. Can grow it down to my asshole if I want to. And you're the one wearin' the skirt."

The two of them glared at each other.

After a minute, Merle laughed long and loud, but something about it didn't sound quite right to Carol. They were family, and she could see a whole other conversation taking place between them. Things communicated with a shift of the eyes or the way a body angled toward or away from the other. There was a lot more going on than she was able to interpret, and it made her antsy.

They ended up sitting around a half-rotted picnic table. Daryl gave an extremely abbreviated report of what had happened since they'd become separated.

"Damn near died," Merle said. "Would have, if they hadn't dropped that bag of tools while they's running off. Cut myself loose, then had to get to shade and water. Ended up stealing a truck and makin' my way here. Doc stitched me up and next I know it's near winter already."

"Dude, you shoulda seen him. Most people would have died of exposure," Jerry interjected. "and that was before the infection set in. If the Doc wasn't here, Merle wouldn't be here right now."

Everyone else turned to look at the Doctor, who suddenly seemed uncomfortable, but Carol kept her eyes on Daryl.

"Owe you," Daryl said, tilting his head toward his brother as he met the Doctor's eyes.

"Bullshit. You don't owe anybody shit. I do," Merle said. "And I pay my own debts. Now, where'd you pick up that growth clingin' to your ass."

It was all Carol could do not to squirm.

"Other way 'round, I reckon," Daryl shrugged. "Carol said she was sick of other people tellin' her what to do and she'd live or die on her own. Was leavin' to find you anyway, and another set of eyes sounded good to me, so we walked off from the group. Doin' fine so far."

A pit opened up in her stomach as she listened to that succinct recitation. That really was all that happened. Somehow in the intervening months it came to feel like so much more to her. They came to feel like so much more. But really, this was the end goal. Daryl found Merle. He could walk away from her right now, and she couldn't even be angry with him for it.

"You're both welcome here," Doc said. He was tall and lanky, with dark hair and pale skin, and an accent that was vaguely English sounding. He was also obviously speaking directly to her instead of Daryl, as if he'd been able to follow the path her thoughts had taken. It was a little creepy.

"Gonna head back to our place today," Daryl said. "We'll think on it, but even if we do move this way there still ain't no reason to leave what we got stockpiled behind."

"At least wait until our scout gets back. Ian is out checking on movements of the infected. Stay long enough to be sure you don't walk into something between here and there."

Daryl turned and looked at her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and Carol could feel Merle's scowl without glancing his way. This wasn't how he'd planned for it to go, and he didn't like it. Daryl knew that, too. The muscles in his neck were standing out as if it was a fight not to look to his big brother, and really, what could she do in the face of that?

"How long? Would that put us travelling after dark?"

"He shouldn't be more than a couple of hours out," Doc said.

"We can stay for a couple of hours, but we really need to make sure we have extra time in case something unexpected happens between here and there?" She meant it to be a declaration, but it still came out sounding like a question.

"Ain't up to you," Merle said.

"Damn sure is," Daryl said. "We got things worked out between us. She's in charge of what she's good at and I'm in charge of what I'm good at. 's how we do things."

"Oh, it's _how you do things_? Takin' orders from some strange woman now, are ya?"

Daryl looked so torn that it broke her heart.

She didn't know what he wanted her to do. She tilted her head and gestured down low to her side, silently asking for guidance and hoping he'd see and give her some kind of clue.

"Do things how we do things," Daryl said, rescuing her. Some of the tension left his body, but he still looked deeply conflicted. "We're used to it, and it works. Y'ain't gotta go with us if you don't want."

Merle blinked. "What the hell, Daryl?"

"Up to you. I'm goin' home, got work to do there and can't be gone so long some damn asshole comes and takes up there while we're away. Wouldn't say no to some help, but if you come with us then you got to do things our way. Ain't handin' shit over to ya just because you show up."

Whatever he wanted to say to that, Merle swallowed it, and nodded instead, his eyes narrowing. He wasn't happy, but he was quiet for now.

"Having allies would be a good thing. It would give everyone a place to fall back to if one of our camps becomes compromised." Doc was nodding slowly, "We could pool resources as well."

That didn't sound like anything Carol was comfortable with, not yet at least. There were too many of them. They could take everything she and Daryl had built and wouldn't even have to try very hard to do it. And didn't that sound like Rick Grimes talking in her head? Daryl knew these people.

She tried to catch his eye, but he was currently engaged in a staring contest with Merle. Doc sent a pointed glance in the direction of the two men and raised an eyebrow at her.

"We'll swing by here next week sometime. Right now, we need to get back. If someone stumbles on our things while we're away, the whole question is moot."

Three hours later, they were walking away the way they'd come. There was a more direct route, Carol knew that, but when Daryl started back toward the fence they'd climbed over she felt more relieved than confused. Good. He wasn't trusting them completely, either.

They were quiet for the time it took them to get back to the bike, though she caught herself looking around almost obsessively.

"Do you think they followed us?"

Daryl chewed on the inside of his cheek for at least half a minute before answering. "Don't think so. Ain't heard or seen nothin' that feels that way. Just – Merle was sober. He's a good guy when he ain't on nothin', believe it or not, but I only knew a couple of them people and Merle, well, he ain't always the best at deciding what kinda folks to hang around, y'know?"

"And the whole world has changed since you saw the others last."

Daryl nodded. "Rick might've come across like a real asshole back in the winter, but it ain't like he's completely wrong. People can change while y'ain't lookin'. Not sayin' we won't come back and join up with 'em if you want to, but gotta let Merle get over bein' pissed I ain't just droppin' everything to do what he says first. Then he can tell us what we need to know, maybe."

"The children seemed well cared for. But I would have felt better if there were other women. Even the children were all boys."

"Hmmm. Saw that."

"I'm sure Merle wouldn't be around – "

"Me and Merle both sat our asses right there and watched your old man beat the hell outta ya. Ain't like we ain't watched the same damn thing a hundred times, either. Woman's gotta get herself out of that shit. All gettin' in the middle does is make it worse for 'em if they ain't ready to walk out. And that group had a shit ton of women in it done the same thing."

"Tell me what you really think," Carol snapped. She didn't really know why, he hadn't said anything that she may not have said herself at one time or another.

He sighed. "Don't mean it was right what he done. Don't mean it was your fault for stayin', 'cause that ain't how it works. Just mean we can't take things the way they seem on the first look, or trust that Merle wouldn't be around people that do bad things, because he's been around a lot of them before. We've gotta make our own judgments on people. I figure we probably know more what to look for than a lot of folks, anyway, so it ain't like that's a bad thing."

She nodded, "You're right. Of course. It would be nice, though. Especially if Rick and the others are still at the storage units. We could have people nearby who could help if things go badly. If there's another herd like…"

"First thing is getting' home. Take stock of what we got left from winter. Decide what we're gonna do this summer." He put his backpack on backwards, the bulk of it settling against his chest. Carol already had hers on her back.

"Better fences come first," Carol said, settling into her place behind him on the bike.

Instead of answering, he started the bike and pulled out from under the treeline, turning toward home.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

When the old white farmhouse came into view, still standing and with no sign of any living people around it, there an odd feeling that twisted around inside of Daryl's chest. He knew he should shove it back down again, or at the very least ignore it. Only a damned fool got attached to a place he was squatting in, like it was actually his or something.

He'd walked away from Merle to come back here. Just got on the bike and come back here, to the place he was building with the woman behind him. Her arms were comfortable around his waist, her warm breath on the back of his neck was, if not exactly pleasant, no longer uncomfortable as long as he remembered it was her. And this place, bigger and sturdier than anywhere he ever slept before, Hershel's place, felt like theirs.

"Looks good," Carol whispered. "Kitchen door?"

Daryl nodded as he was sliding off the bike waited for her to take up her regular position.

Everything was exactly as they left it, and Daryl blew out a breath and shook his arms, relieved.

"Every time, I'm afraid we'll lose it," Carol whispered, rubbing her upper arms like she'd taken a chill.

Daryl nodded at her. "Yeah. Might shoulda tried to talk Merle into coming. And Jerry. Know him, he's a good guy. More hands, y'know? Somebody could guard the place while we went out and got shit."

She hummed at him distractedly, stretching as she walked toward what was left of their food stash. It was smaller than he liked. She had two or three in gathered together like she was going to take them to the fire, and there wasn't even a fire lit yet. She wasn't looking directly at him, either.

"You don't want him here. That's why you ain't sayin' nothing."

Her head came up quick, her eyes wide. "No. That's not it."

"Yeah? What is it, then?"

"I'm afraid of him."

"He's an asshole, but he ain't gonna hurt ya."

"That's not it. It's stupid, and selfish, and I'm probably wrong, anyway. We should just decide on supper, have a nice meal, and then I'll take first watch."

"Nah. We don't work like that. You got somethin' to say, you say it."

Carol opened and closed her mouth three times before she took a deep breath and said, "I don't think you want him here," Carol whispered. "I think you want him sober, and you want him safe. And if you had to choose one of those, you'd choose sober. Because he can be sober without being safe, but he can't ever be safe without being sober. I think what you really want is for him to be next door, or down the block. That you want him here but not _right here_. But I also know that I probably think all of those things because I'm afraid. I'm not afraid of him because I think he'll hurt me physically. I just…. I'm afraid that now that you've found Merle everything will change." her voice faded away and she shrugged. She still wasn't looking at him.

Daryl's chest felt tight, and he could feel panic creeping up on him. It was hard to breath. He couldn't have put what he was feeling into words in a month of Sundays, but she came close. Every now and then she said something that made him feel like she could see inside of his head, and that freaked him out more than a little. He didn't realize he was pacing until she mumbled an apology at him.

"You're right. Not—he ain't changin' nothin. I want his help. I want people to watch the place while we go out scavenging because we need shit. I want to trade off watch so we can sleep all night more nights. I want help buildin' fences and digging walker traps, and I want somebody to help fix that damned generator. I'd like having a Doc around in case somebody got hurt. All that shit sounds real good 'til I think about other people in this house with us and then I—I like it bein' just us. This decidin' things between us? I like that."

She was smiling at him, now. It was his favorite of her smiles, too, all soft and sweet looking. If somebody told him a year ago that he would have such a thing as a favorite smile from somebody else, he'd've called 'em a pussy and knocked their teeth out.

Shit.

He'd gone all soft on Carol Peletier. He'd kind of suspected for a while. Sometimes he'd be looking at her and something would shift inside him and he'd have to take a walk before he embarrassed himself like a damned teenager, but that was just biology. Never could stand being touched enough to do anything like the things he sometimes thought about doing with her, and he wouldn't ever in a million years do things with her the way he'd done them with other people. That was just nature, though. It wasn't feelings. Not feelings to the extent of the ones that were currently rushing through him. She was his friend, dammit. He never, not one time, had a real friend that wasn't Merle, and now he'd gone and screwed it up. This wasn't something he was going to be able to solve with a few minutes of privacy and his own hand. This was serious heart shit, and it snuck right up on him.

"Daryl?"

And of course, she noticed. She had to notice, didn't she?

"Gonna get some firewood," he said, the words coming in a rush. Shit.

She said something as he was passing through the door, but he didn't really hear it over the noise in his head and he sure as shit was not going back in there and asking her what she said. He made his way to the wood pile and tried to let the rhythm and the physical activity settle his stomach. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't. It didn't change anything.

If he had to choose between living with Merle and living with Carol, he'd choose Carol. Not just for today because Merle was likely in a mood over Daryl's defiance, but…shit. And she knew. Of course, she knew. But she hadn't gotten all weird on him or anything. It didn't seem to bother her any. She smiled, even. And he wasn't gonna try to climb all over her or anything. There wasn't any way in hell she wanted that, and that was fine with him. Hell, they'd just now started to be able to stand to be all up in each other's space.

Now that he thought about it, they'd been working their way to something more than they were for a long time, and his dumb ass finally figuring that out didn't change anything.

But what the hell did he know? It could all be in his head. She might not know a damned thing, either. For all he knew, now that Spring was here and the weather was starting to warm, she wouldn't even want to sleep next to each other.

"Daryl? Are you okay?"

He was so lost in his thoughts he didn't hear her approach until she spoke, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. "Fine."

She was five feet away from him, barely visible in the fading light, her arms wrapped around her waist. "You stopped working but didn't come inside. I just—well, dinner's ready."

Why was there so little oxygen out here? He couldn't catch his breath for the life of him. "Yeah? What're we havin?"

"I mixed a box of Mac and Cheese with a can of chilli."

"That's some good shit," he said, grinning. See, nothing changed. Everything was good. It was gonna be fine. No problem.

She rolled her eyes at him as she turned to go, "If you say so. You owe me, Dixon."

Carol hated mac and cheese mixed with canned chilli. She thought it was just a way to turn two good things into one awful thing. The only reason she would ever willingly make that was because she knew he liked it. He knew that about her. He knew it the same way he knew that she was worryin' right now about how she coulda made him mad at her, even though he was the farthest away from mad that a man could get. He knew she was trying to get the mood back that they'd had this morning on the road, the one where she teased him just enough to dance on the line between amused and uncomfortable, but never enough to cross that line.

So that's it, then. There was no hope for it now. Daryl had never in his life, not one time, quit anything he. He held onto things as tight as he could until they slipped away from him, which they always did. Nothing to do but deal with it.

He loaded himself down with firewood as much to gain himself another minute as anything else. There was a stack next to the fireplace that would get them through the night easy. By the time he got inside, she already had everything dished out and had taken her place on the mattresses in front of the fireplace.

Everything still seemed a lot closer than it had before, sort of closed in and awkward. He hated when they got awkward. It just felt wrong in a fundamental kind of way. Like waking up to a green sky and blue grass. His bowl was filled to overflowing, a can of soda on the floor nearby. Everything set up the way they liked it.

"So, your turn to start," he said. They always did the question thing at night. His stomach was all twisted up with worry that she'd ask why he run out earlier like his ass was on fire, but if she did, he would just answer her. Because that's what they did.

But she didn't, because Carol knew him at least as good as he knew her, and when she opened her mouth it was to ask, "If you could go anywhere and see anything, where would you go? Before, I mean. When it was possible."

This was the part where Merle would say something crude that anybody in their right mind would smack him for, but whatever girl he was with would giggle and jump his bones for it.

And why the hell would he go thinkin' a thing like that? That was the kind of shit that always annoyed him about his brother. He'd refused to act like that, especially toward Carol.

So, he shoved that voice right out of his head and said, "Alaska."

She raised her eyebrows, "You didn't have to think long about that one."

"They got whole spaces up there still where people ain't screwed things up. Got woods for days and days. Different, though, because of the difference in climate and shit. Be like being a kid, have to learn everything all over again. Always wanted to see it. And Yosemite, too, but I read that there's always lots of folks there and that would probably kinda ruin it. What about you? Where you wanna go?

"I don't know. Yours is really good. It makes mine seem like a cliché."

"You gonna forfeit on your own question?" Daryl grinned. "Ain't never won that fast!"

"You've never won! You aren't winning now! Fine, I want to go to Delphi."

"Like, and talk to the Oracle?"

Carol grinned, "Not so much that as — it's just really, really old. Something about there still being evidence of people there, thousands of years later, I just want to see it." She shrugged. "It's nowhere near as cool as yours. I think I might rather go with you."

Knowing that she was talking about an imaginary trip did nothing to keep his stomach from going all funny on him. This was getting' ridiculous.

 _Just gonna take some time_ , he thought. _Get used to it, and then everythin' can go back like it's supposed to be._

"Okay, my turn. If you could pick one thing that we ain't got and we'd have it, what would you pick. And no cheatin' and saying 'lifetime supply of' something."

"I want two," she said, without hesitation.

"Damn, you been givin' that some thought."

Carol nodded. "Of course. Haven't you?"

"Nope. And you're stallin'."

"I can't pick."

"Sure ya can."

"Well, if it's one, I'll have to say a chicken. For eggs."

"What's the other one?"

"A cow and a bull. We could have milk, and cheese, and butter. And eventually meat, too."

"Need something stronger than the fences we got to have either of those. Just walker bait."

Carol shrugged, "That's true, but that wasn't your question. A way to safely have the thing I wanted was implied."

"Pffft. Think you mean inferred." She gave him a look that heavily implied he was full of shit. "Ask your damned question."

Daryl shifted into a more comfortable position and gave her his best innocent look. "I'm waitin'. You stumped?"

 _This feelin'_ , he thought. _This is what folks mean when they say it's good to be home._ If they were nothing other than this forever, he could live with that.


End file.
